Final Destination: Facing Death's Design
by Anthony Marston
Summary: 11 people on a high school science class field trip narrowly escape death after two students share a premonition of disaster. Sadly this story will never be finished due to other commitments, but will be left online for what fans it has
1. Chapter 1: Rude Awakenings

(Chapter 1: Rude Awakenings)  
  
Water. "Holy Crap!" Pain. Screams. Fire. "We have to get out of here!" The whole world was turning on end. Can't breathe. "Mike!"  
  
"Hey Mike, wake up!"  
  
Mike Hooper woke up in with his heart pounding and in a cold sweat, but otherwise very tired and very groggy and in a reasonably good mood. God damned bad dreams. Quickly, he looked around, getting his bearings. Still dark, only the moon and the stars out the window. Is it night? Is it morning? Occasionally light would pass through the window as another cars headlights would pass by the windows of the bus, but nothing outstanding. It looked like the sun was on the rise, but it would be a while before anything even close to a sunrise would happen. Occasionally the bright lights of a semi truck would pass by, but they were few and far between.  
  
"Goddamn Oceanography class," he heard a voice say.  
  
Looking to his right, Mike saw his best friend sitting next to him. Tyler Kroeger, redneck to the first order and not the brightest bulb in the circuit, but overall one of the nicest guys around and interesting whenever you get him near matches and some gasoline. God knows nobody tries harder.  
  
"Huh?" was all Mike could muster up the energy for.  
  
"I said God damned Oceanography class! This is supposed to be five science credits, not something I get up at four in the morning to get to school by five for."  
  
"You woke me up just so you could gripe?"  
  
"Basically," Tyler said, "I was bored."  
  
"Besides the fact that you woke me up and seriously pissed me off, most of the great science done is field work, you are getting a truly unique opportunity here. And besides, when have you ever been on a boat before?"  
  
It seemed as if Tyler needed to muster up every brain cell to think of an answer, "Never I guess."  
  
"Exactly. Neither have I for that matter. Kind of a crime since we both live in California, eh?"  
  
"Yeah, I guess."  
  
"Besides, we're in perhaps one of the nicest busses around, complete soundproofing, TV and DVD player, bathroom. First class all the way man," Mike said, stretching out in his seat.  
  
"Wow, you actually talked like you could've been cool there for a second," Tyler said guffawing.  
  
"Shut up cracker, people are trying to sleep here!" yelled someone from across the aisle. Tyler and Mike both looked across to see Clinton Baker and Lori Winston glowering over for a moment before returning to making out. Mike watched as Clinton pulled a beach towel over him and his girlfriend, and sounds of passion began to emanate from the seat.  
  
"Hey Mike, snap out of it man."  
  
Looking back to his friend, Mike yawned again.  
  
"Man, how come we can't get dates and Clinton always gets in the pants of pretty much every girl in school?"  
  
Laughing again, Tyler looked to his friend with a bit of intelligence.  
  
"You want me to list the reasons?"  
  
Amused by where the conversation was going, Mike simply nodded.  
  
"He's in, like perfect shape, he's got good teeth, he's captain of the football team, he's feared by every guy at school, he's rich and he's got a motorcycle. What do you got to offer?"  
  
Sitting around, Mike thought of an answer, and failed miserably.  
  
"A job at some second rate pizza joint, a Toyota, ten extra pounds, glasses, and red hair."  
  
Finally bored of the conversation, Mike started rooting around in his backpack for a flashlight and a book. With a bit of success and luck, he found the perfect bus reading material, "Great Disasters of the Modern Era." Idly flipping through the pages while Tyler was continuing on a rant, he dropped the flashlight in between two random pages. Clumsy, you gotta add that to the list, Mike thought with somewhat of a laugh and a little bit of resentment. Clumsy is another one of your more attractive qualities. Lifting the flashlight so the pages could be read, he was greeted with the picture of a boat with a gaping hole in the side. The ANDREA DORIA it read. A chill went up his spine at seeing the picture of a boat with a gaping hole in its side. Just admit it Mike, you're afraid of drowning, and that's why you had that damned dream. Though reading about a shipwreck before going on a boat ride isn't going to help very much.  
  
"Hey Mike, you still listening to me man?"  
  
Shaking himself off inside, Mike spoke up, "Yeah, I'm cool."  
  
"Oh yeah you're cool. Exactamundo tu problemo mi amigo."  
  
Bored and very tired, Mike giggled at his friends answer.  
  
"Three years of Spanish class and that's the best answer you could come up with?"  
  
"Hey man," Tyler said, "I failed the first two times, cut a guy some sla-"  
  
His voice was cut off by a football hitting him square in the chest. Grabbing the ball and standing up, Tyler could see the culprit, Nick Romero, senior, utterly brilliant when it came to topics of history and photography, though otherwise completely inept at all things related to people.  
  
"Hey man, a little help?" Nick hollered from the front.  
  
Smiling his wide, toothy smile, Tyler pulled his arm back and let the ball fly, hitting Nick square in the face.  
  
"Nice hands Nick," Tyler joked.  
  
Nick could have made something of it if he wanted to, but Tyler was well known as a dirty fighter and a guy who likes to hit below the belt. Time can be better spent than beating some inbred redneck hick into the ground, Nick mused, smiling at circumstances. Locked in a bus headed for the beach, no school, no exams…  
  
Craning his neck so that he could get a better look at the seat in front of him, Nick let his cocky grin go across his face, and you're surrounded by beautiful women. Dad was right, Oceanography is the way to go, chicks dig the guy who goes for the science class that deals with seals and dolphins and all that other friendly and fluffy crap. Popping on the headphones of his walkman, he pumped up the volume on a loud guitar solo from Santana's "Smooth". Now that's a good omen, he thought, you're smooth, he's smooth, chicks're smooth, it's all good. Adjusting his position so he sat back in his seat, he felt his backpack shift underneath him, sending it and its contents tumbling to the floor. Hitting a bad corner, the walkman shifted radio stations and jolted up the volume what felt to be a few million points to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic.  
  
"Holy shit!" he yelled, ripping the headphones from his ears. He inadvertently threw the player up, landing it in the seat in front of him. Rock and roll at a loud volume is all right at this hour in the morning, but Celine Dion at an excruciating volume is a whole 'nother issue. Popping up from two seats in front of him, came the heads of Tina Carpenter the blonde, and Sarah Rodriguez the Latina, both cheerleaders and both best friends, often rumored to be gay among the lower classes, though truth be told they couldn't be if they wanted to.  
  
"You lose something?" Sarah said with a mischievous grin.  
  
"Yeah," was the best that Nick could manage to spit out with the two beautiful women sitting above him, "a little help?"  
  
Tina held the CD player teasingly above him, "You forgot to say please."  
  
"Please?" Nick said deadpan.  
  
"That didn't sound sincere enough to me," Tina said, "say it with conviction."  
  
"Come on, give it back!" Nick said, raising his voice above the crowd, gathering a few shushes and some dirty looks from people sitting around him.  
  
"Say PLEASE," Tina said with a laugh.  
  
"Tina, just give it to him," Sarah said.  
  
"No way, this is too much fun," Tina said with a sarcastic laugh.  
  
"Give it back before I make you think about me wearing a speedo," Nick said in a manner with which to terrify the other girls. It was successful.  
  
"Ewwww!!!!" Tina said with great exaggeration, giving the player back to its rightful owner.  
  
The two girls say back down in their chair, with Sarah laughing like hell and Tina sporting a look of disgust on her face.  
  
"You gotta admit that was pretty funny," Sarah said with a snicker.  
  
"That was just, like, totally gross," Tina persisted, "I wanna just run a toothbrush across my brain, 'cause it's like, ewwww!!!"  
  
"Don't you go worrying yourself with Nick now, the guy's a freak," Sarah said.  
  
"I heard that!" Nick said from his seat, the headphones still hanging around his neck.  
  
"That's nice," Sarah said.  
  
She turned her attention forward, looking to the TV. It was too early in the morning for there to be anything good on TV, just hours upon hours of Gilligan's Island repeats. With nothing better to do, Sarah just dozed off, leaning her head against the window of the bus.  
  
In a seat across the way, Rhonda Craven sat uncomfortably wedged up against a window. She sat next to Rudy Williamson, a big African-American student who many gave the nickname John Henry for his sheer size and brute strength. He was a star defender on the school's oft-times losing football team, and generally a good-hearted guy. Rhonda herself was of similar social status at the school, a track and field athlete and the first African-American ever to be the editor of the school newspaper, even though she really just liked to write. She initially jumped at the chance to be sitting next to Rudy, having had a schoolgirl crush on the big man, but almost as soon as the bus started up he was unconscious. As time went by, he began leaning up against her, making her scrunch herself more and more against the window. She tried to keep the sheer awkwardness of the situation out of her mind by looking out the window, watching the darkened buildings on the way to beach and streaks of light from oncoming cars. Watching out the window, she could see an industrial oil field, the pumps cycling up and down, looking like giant, metallic insects. In the middle of the field, there were a couple of pumps that looked like they had been knocked down for some reason. As the bus moved on and the view changed, Rhonda got a glimpse of how it happened. There were the remains of an airplane that had crashed long ago, a hollow, burned out shell. It was no bigger than a Cessna, but it stood out clearly for some reason. She shuddered slightly at the thought. There's a good omen, she thought with a laugh. She sighed, leaning up against the window and trying her best to get some sleep.  
  
At the front of the bus sat the only three true adults of the group. Mr. Valentine "Val" Christy was the school's designated Oceanography class teacher. A bearded and balding man in his mid-fifties, he couldn't have been any prouder of the two classes. It was a constant fight with the school to get the yearly field trip on, and this year looked to be the last one. The budget isn't big enough for semester sciences, they'd say, so Human Physiology, The Developing Child, Psychology, and Oceanography would all have to be cancelled. Well, looks like your back to teaching biology, Mr. Christy thought with a scowl. A good, hearty science class, but the students were all bored with it. At least Oceanography gets them interested in science. Besides, the students in Oceanography could care less at the language you used, they signed up for the class knowing what they'd get.  
  
He smiled his wise smile, looking at the two other "adults" on the trip. Darwin Wong was a curious college student in his early twenties, desperately trying to work out some hours for community service and also trying his best to get his degree in education. Regardless, he was a quick learner and was easy to please, and a few months as a teachers assistant, or an overrated chaperone would help him out a bit. He snored loudly, a trail of drool leaking from the edge of his mouth and onto his copy of Jaws. He'd have an interesting wakeup call, Mr. Christy thought with a smile. Then there was Ms. Aileen Rhodes, the civics teacher and without a doubt the most beautiful teacher in school. It was a popular rumor among the students that she once had a career in pornography, one that most of the male students wished to confirm but none ever could. She was a pleasant looking blonde in her late twenties, also watching the Gilligan's Island episodes through her pair of wire-rimmed glasses. He looked at his watch, almost six o'clock. The sun would be coming out soon, be at the beach in another, half an hour? Oh well, he thought as he leaned back in his bus chair, better make this one last.  
  
---------  
  
The bus finally reached the beach at 6:45, almost half-an-hour earlier than expected. The beach town of Vista Del Mar was small and sparsely populated, as the beaches and waters weren't safe or good enough for surfers, being pot marked with tide pools and other havens for sea life. There was a nice marine conservatory, with its own group of marine biologists and their own miniscule fleet of scientific vessels. The bus pulled into the parking lot, and Mr. Christy stood up in front. He surveyed his class, most of them sleeping or most of them so bored to the point that they wouldn't care if the world ended at that very moment. Looking to get their attention, he reached into his trademark leather satchel and pulled out an air horn. He held it above his head, and pulled the trigger. The bus filled with a deafening roar of the horn and more than a few screams and curses from the student body.  
  
"Welcome one and all to scenic Vista Del Mar! Thirty-eight of you got on this bus, and I sure as hell expect for thirty-eight of you to get off of this bus! Come on, let's get up and moving! There's cold coffee and hot milk, or something like that waiting for us at the conservatory, and donuts, yes you heard me right, donuts! If y'all don't get up and at 'em Ms. Rhodes, Darwin and I will be obligated to eat all the donuts for ourselves, now you wouldn't want that now, right? So get a move on, food's on the way! Come on people, we don't have all morning, let's go!" Mr. Christy said in his usually energetic and almost psychotic fashion.  
  
"Come on Mr. Christy, we need sleep!" Nick grumbled, just slightly louder than the rest.  
  
"All right, no donuts for you Mr. Romero, and now your grade revolves around whether or not you kiss a sea cucumber! We find one and you kiss it and you pass this class, all right?"  
  
Nick laughed along with a few of the other classmates, until Mr. Christy looked on in all seriousness, "You think I'm kidding?"  
  
Nick's wide and toothy grin quickly turned to a scowl, before he was caught up in the melee to get out of the bus and get at the donuts. Mr. Christy did a quick head count, and surely enough there were thirty-eight students. Thirty-eight students, two faculty and one teacher's aide. They all had varying levels of excitement and enthusiasm, but the general census seemed to be that everyone was happy to be there. The aging man smiled.  
  
"So, this is your last field trip?" Ms. Rhodes asked as she lifted her backpack.  
  
"Excuse me?" Mr. Christy responded as he got out of his thoughts.  
  
"This is your last oceanography field trip? Right?"  
  
"Oh, yeah, I mean, yes it is. Every year I look forward to this, and now they don't have the budget or the spine for it anymore. It gives this old fossil the perfect excuse to retire, I'm just going to go up to my cabin and study Venus Flytraps for the rest of my days."  
  
"Sounds like you got yourself a plan there old-timer," Ms. Rhodes said playfully.  
  
"Get out of here you little sprout before I tear you a new one," Mr. Christy said in response, adding his usual wink and a nod. She's cute, he thought, and you're old enough to be her father. Or at least you're old enough to know better. He picked up his leather satchel and books and walked to the exit of the bus. With a polite nod to the driver, he stood at the door. He looked out, surveying the rocky beach, the rough surf, and the cloudy skies. The sun was breaking through and the air was cool, but it was pleasant enough. He breathed in the air and relished it. This is your last time, he thought to himself, damn you've had some good years here. With a moment's hesitation, he stepped off of the bus. 


	2. Chapter 2: O Pesadelo

Chapter 2: O Pesadelo)  
  
The morning was spent much more slowly than anyone would have fessed up to, though Nick took it as his duty to display the boredom of the group every chance he got. Hours were spent on the beach with various "scientists" as they explained ocean currents and various shore critters, as well as the grand mystery behind the bamboo that constantly washed up on shore, while some time was given to the students to do a little exploring on their own.  
  
Mike was seriously regretting his choice of Tyler as a partner. Yes, he's your best friend, and he's a nice guy, and he does what he's told to do, but when it comes to science he just doesn't take anything seriously. While other pairs were searching for mollusks from the lists that Mr. Christy had handed out, Tyler just wandered, mingling with people from the other pairs. He thinks he's a ladies man, Mike thought almost with some disgust. Then again, look at yourself.  
  
Everyone seemed to be taking a break, sprawling themselves out on the sand.  
  
"Everybody take twenty, get yourselves some lunch. I hope y'all brown-bagged it, 'cause you aren't getting anything any other way. Twenty minutes, then we hit the boat!" Mr. Christy yelled.  
  
"Real smart, eating lunch before we go on a boat," Nick mentioned snidely, "might as well call this boat the vomitorium."  
  
"You don't pipe down and we get to call the boat Val's House of Pain, am I clear?" Mr. Christy tried to say with seriousness, though unable to hold back at a smile. Verbally sparring with Nick all but made his life interesting.  
  
"Crystal," Nick said with his million dollar grin.  
  
Mike sat down on the beach, clumsily opening his backpack and pulling out a crushed lunch bag. He opened the tattered brown bag, peanut butter sandwich that had most of its contents in its plastic bag instead of in the bread, a banana that looked like it had been behind a radiator and a can of Coke that seemed like it would burst at any minute. On the plus side, the Oreos seemed to be in perfect condition, so there would be some benefits after all. He opened the plastic bag with the sandwich, and tried his best to eat the crushed bread and goo. Looking down the beach, he caught a glimpse at Sarah. For a moment, she looked up and they locked eyes. Sarah smiled, Mike tried to look away.  
  
"Pickings are slim," Tyler said, "too many girls know the act."  
  
Mike looked to his friend and chuckled, "Or maybe it's just nobody's willing to buy the act of a guy everyone calls The Sleaze King."  
  
"That too," Tyler said.  
  
Tyler plowed into his sack lunch, noisily and messily eating his sandwich, licking his fingers and talking a mile a minute about who wore what underwear and what kind of dates he couldn't get. And this guy wonders why he can't get a date, Mike mused, not the brightest bulb in the circuit yet loyal to the end. A great and dangerous combination.  
  
"You see, that's why I'm going to live forever, it's a guarantee," Tyler said with a mouthful of potato chips.  
  
"Why is it this time, you invent the longevity pills again?" Mike said, trying his best not to laugh.  
  
"No, not that, that wouldn't have worked anyway, you know how hard it is to find a rhino horn in these parts, no, the sleaze king is gonna live forever because he made a deal with the big guy upstairs. So long as I don't get any, I live, and you and I both know I ain't ever gonna get any tail."  
  
Trying his best to hold it back, Mike failed, utterly breaking out into laughter. Tyler looked hurt at first before joining his friend.  
  
"All right you little sum-bitches, knock it off!" Mr. Christy was practically yelling, intimating the fight that had broken out between Nick and Clinton.  
  
"Come on Mr. Christy, the guy knocked me down!" Nick protested, "And you don't knock down someone walking on their hands!"  
  
"He was talking smack about me and my h-, girlfriend," Clinton said, using a cock of the head to indicate his girlfriend as they sat in the sand together.  
  
"I don't care who did what, either of you gets hurt, I get blamed, simple as that, you so much as break a nail and I swear as soon as you're not my responsibility I'm going to make you hurt, you get me?" Mr. Christy said, using the same threat he used every class.  
  
"Yes sir," Nick said with mock seriousness.  
  
"Yeah, whatever," Clinton said.  
  
"All right, now that we've got that settled," Mr. Christy said, raising his voice so the whole class could hear, "we're going to get down to business. Lunch is over."  
  
There were the standard amount of groans, to which Mr. Christy raised his hands and waved for silence, "but we're going on the boat. Now, normally you're only able to see ocean life on the topside, which is pretty much the only way we can see it being landlubbers, though with this boat we have the unique opportunity of seeing it as it's meant to be seen. Come on everyone, follow me!"  
  
Begrudgingly, every student and staff member got up and joined the caravan across the sand and towards the dock almost a hundred yards away.  
  
"What's that all about, see it as it's meant to be seen," Tina asked idly, kicking at the sand and wishing she'd brought shoes she wasn't afraid of getting dirty.  
  
"I don't know," Sarah said, "submarine maybe? Or maybe he's going to throw Nick in the water and let the sharks fight over him."  
  
Tina joined her friend at chuckling over her simple wit. Calming down a bit, Tina looked back down the line and spotted Tyler and Mike.  
  
"I think you've got a stalker," Tina said, quickly turning her head back front.  
  
"Who?" Sarah asked, looking back in the same direction as Tina intimated. She saw Mike, who was looking at her and instantly looked away.  
  
"Mike?"  
  
"Bingo!" Tina responded, "The guy's creepy."  
  
"Don't knock Mike, he's a sweet guy."  
  
"But he's weird."  
  
"There's a distinct difference between weird and quiet, he likes to keep to himself," Sarah said defensively.  
  
"Why are you standing up for this guy, he's weird and he always watches you, it's creepy."  
  
Feeling bored and honest, and having a few minutes to kill, Sarah indulged her friend, "Mike and I were practically best friends from age five through twelve, he was my first crush, and I'm pretty sure I was his. Then I hit puberty, he hit the books, we parted ways and we're where we are today. He's a nice guy, one of the sweetest around, and very protective."  
  
"Well," Tina said, not impressed, "I still think he's creepy."  
  
"You think whatever you want, I know what I know," Sarah responded, looking away from Tina and to the dock which they were rapidly approaching.  
  
"There's the boat!" Mr. Christy said enthusiastically, pointing to an aged, white boat with the words "O Pesadelo" written on the side.  
  
"O Pesadelo?" Nick inquired, "What's that mean?"  
  
Soft spoken Katie Underwood lifted her voice above the others, "It's Portugeuse, it means 'The Nightmare'."  
  
"Cute," Nick said with a slight shiver as they approached the boat and hit the dock.  
  
"I don't promise you'll see anything today," Mr. Christy said, "but I do promise today is going to be an interesting day you'll remember for some time." 


	3. Chapter 3: Descent

(Chapter 3: Descent)  
  
The O Pesadelo was a relatively modern boat, not overly impressive in it's capabilities as a boat and excellent in its scientific capabilities. It had modern sonar equipment and fish finding tools, and within an hour of leaving shore the sample nets they had dropped into the ocean had brought them some sizable crustaceans and two, count 'em, two guitar fish. The students, most of whom never gave a damn about what was going on in science class actually seemed to be interested in what they were doing, for once. Mr. Christy stood beaming as he surveyed his students, as they enjoyed the science.  
  
"You did good Mr. Christy," Ms. Rhodes said to the older man.  
  
"We'll thanks Ms. Rhodes," he said deadpan.  
  
"We've worked together for years, how many times do I have to say, it's Aileen."  
  
"Then you have to call me Val."  
  
"Deal," she said with a wide smile, holding out her hand so the two could shake.  
  
"So, Aileen," Mr. Christy said with some difficulty, "you having fun?"  
  
"Yeah, this is something else, better than spending all day grading papers."  
  
"You ain't seen nothing yet," Mr. Christy said, then raising his voice, "All right everyone, leave your packs topside and head downstairs, it's time for the wildlife identification part of the day, and this will count as part of your final!"  
  
Hearing a wave of groans gave him the same amount of entertainment as watching a good game of football, and obediently they all filed down the flight of stairs that had previously been a mystery to the group.  
  
Once underneath, the students were greeted with the sight of the open ocean off the coast of California, clear blue with five miles worth of visibility in every direction. The walls and center strip in the floor were made out of inch thick Plexiglas, allowing views of the ocean that weren't visible before, while there were rows of seats that would allow a perfect line of sight for anyone sitting anywhere. They could see small schools of fish and the occasional seal dart around in the ocean, while the floor teemed with random pieces of garbage, sand, rock and simple sea life. All the students gathered around their teacher as he descended the stairs and joined the group.  
  
"All right, here's how this is going to work, you get in groups and identify as many animals as possible. We've got seven groups, five will have six people, and two will have four people each. Team captains have been chosen on mainland, based on who shelled up the cash to bring the disposable cameras. Each of you will go to a station once I read your name. Here goes, from front to back. Sarah, Nick, Clinton, Rudy, Natalie, Mike, Rhonda are the captains. Get to your seats! I'll send you your groups."  
  
Mike couldn't have been happier, since his seat was no less than five feet from where he stood. Sure, it was the back of the boat and he'd have engine noise to contend with, but the windows were big and wide, and the floor section did offer a nice view. The boat rocked slightly, and Mike adjusted himself as best as possible so that he wouldn't be taken out of his seat. He looked around, marveling at the strength and sturdiness of the boat. Large pipes ran along the ceiling, their purposes unknown yet their hiss seemingly comforting. Behind the group and down a short hall was the engine room, separated by a thick metal door with huge metal bolts. As Mike kept watch out in the ocean for anything and looked along the glass for signs of cracking, a hand touched his shoulder, soft, female. For some odd reason, the world shifted slightly and a gray haze went before his eyes, though the recovery was quick. That was weird, he thought. He looked up to see Sarah, who had been using his shoulder to balance herself.  
  
"Hey Mike, sorry about that," she said.  
  
"It's no problem ma'am," Mike said in his usual manner, secretly smacking himself inside his head. You said ma'am? Jesus Christ, get a life!  
  
"Hey Mike?" she said.  
  
"Yes Sarah…" he responded.  
  
"Say hi to your dad for me, it's been a while. How's he doing?"  
  
"He's fine. I'll tell him you said hi."  
  
She smiled her radiant smile, and Mike couldn't help but smile back. Shake it off Mikey, he thought, you're dreaming again. She got up and walked to the other end of the boat, sitting down in her empty seat. Mr. Christy walked the aisles, as the groups dispersed to their seats, looking out the windows with the students. Mike couldn't help but look over at Sarah, but she was working elsewhere.  
  
"Hey class! Now remember everyone, by the end of the day I want you to all have identified at least ten types of fish, five crustaceans and ten different mollusks. Extra credit goes to those who can properly identify and take a picture of a reptile, a mammal and/or a bird. Now there's glass all around you, so if you don't find at least one of those things then I guarantee you will sit in the dungeon for the rest of the semester." He smiled proudly.  
  
"Aww, come on Mr. Christy, how are we supposed to-" Nick started.  
  
"Keep to the bald jokes Nick," Mr. Christy cut in, "it's what you're good at."  
  
"I would," Nick stated with a grin, "but I'm kind of distracted, the glare off your head is a little bright."  
  
Mr. Christy smiled back. "Back to work ya little bastard," he said.  
  
He continued along his rounds checking out the groups.  
  
Tyler approached Mike, and he felt an instant moment of dread followed by the answer he had half expected and half wanted to avoid.  
  
"Hey Mike, I'm in your group man!" Tyler said proudly.  
  
Mike looked to his group as it materialized a little distressed. Look's like you've got the brain group. There was Tyler, resident dumbass and redneck extraordinary, as well as your best friend Mikey. Then there was Jack, resident wiseass in the class, or at least the wannabe. The title truly went to Nick, but that was a silent understanding that everyone knew. Tina, ditzy cheerleader to the extreme, and rumored to be more things than even she probably knew about. That left Ana Maria and Aaron. They were nice and reasonably smart enough people, but they were self-appointed drama king and queen, making being in their presence more of a soap opera than anything else. Some people were lucky, he thought. Nick got Katie Underwood, one of the sweetest and cutest girls in school, even though she was asthmatic and a bit of a nerd. Nick was having a field day, between looking at the cute Katie and the admitted slut Tanesha Graves, as he got the perfect chance to take pictures looking down her shirt when she was turned the other way. Clinton got Lori, so they'd be making out while everyone else did the work. Rudy got Trisha, Jean and Linda, three of the prettiest girls in school, as well as Scott and Tim Voorhees (the twins) who were both certified geniuses. Then there were those who were having infinitely more fun. Darwin, hired as the chaperone for the day, sat between Mike and Rhonda's groups, playing a Gameboy.  
  
"All right group," Mike said trying to sound as official as possible, "if you see anything shout it out and I'll take a picture of it."  
  
"What about identifying it? That's part of the grade too!" Tyler said irritably.  
  
"I got it all up here, entire manifest of all fishes and other fauna located in the Southern California waters," he took the break in his sentence to get a look over at Sarah. She was smiling, enjoying the project. She looked up, and their eyes met. She smiled back at Mike, whereupon he finished his sentence, "I guarantee you guys we're going to do just fi-"  
  
His sentence was cut off by a large jolt, sending the whole boat rocking. Flames shot through the back and he could hear screams. What was that? The engines were stopped.  
  
"Holy crap!" someone yelled, before another explosion ripped through the cabin. Flames shot through the back door, tearing it from its hinges and throwing it far, landing on top of Natalie, Richard, Malcolm and Jimmy, killing all four instantly. Flames engulfed Rhonda's group, Darwin and shot near Mike's seats. Aaron and Ana Maria were lit on fire, where they rolled on the ground screaming. Smoke filled the cabin. A pipe fell from the ceiling, one end cleaving open the head of Reese. Ms. Rhodes tried to tend to a downed student. Above her another pipe burst, this one sending out chunks of shrapnel every which way. A piece the size of a laptop flew with startling speed towards her leg, severing it at the knee. She lay down on the floor, screaming and writhing on the floor, holding her gushing stump of a leg. Mr. Christy ran over to the fire, ripping a fire extinguisher from the wall and spraying it on his students. Mike could feel fire burning his face, and he yelled out in pain.  
  
"Holy Mary mother of gawd…" Mr. Christy managed to choke out, as he saw his students, his friend and the chaperone dead and dying. Memories of Vietnam flashed before his eyes as he saw the death around him, though they passed when the survival instinct kicked in. Several members of the boat's crew joined Mike, Mr. Christy, Tyler, Antonio and Phil in trying to fan out the flames. Once the fires abated slightly, a greater problem made itself clear. Water began to gush into the open door, enough to already tilt the cabin some. More girls screamed, the smoke, the flames, the water, it was all a blur.  
  
The boat began to tilt slightly, but as the water began gushing in it filled more. Ms. Rhodes lay down on the floor in shock, not moving, suffering from massive blood loss. Her lost tissue mixed with the water, causing the water that filled the room to be tainted a light red. Students rushed for exits, only to be thrown to the side as the boat rotated on its y-axis. Within a minute, the boat was completely rolled over, it's bottom now the top. Water was waist high, and climbing fast.  
  
"Jesus Christ, we're all going to drown!" someone yelled.  
  
The water crept higher, now at everyone's chests. Mike looked around quickly, looking for anyone he knew. There were students everywhere. He could see some bodies floating, while others tried their best to avoid the corpses of their friends. The former glass bottom of the boat now acted like a skylight, letting them see the day and letting the day see them. With the water creeping higher, there was only a matter of a foot between them and the now glass ceiling. Mr. Christy began smashing the fire extinguisher he grabbed earlier into the glass, trying in vain to break it out. It wouldn't budge. The stuff was made to withstand bullet impacts, a fire extinguisher would do nothing.  
  
"We have to get out of here!" someone yelled.  
  
Rudy was determined to live. Gotta save the others, save yourself, he thought, this is your time to shine. The giant football player took a deep breath and swam for the bottom, or was it the top of the ship? He didn't know now. He swam along, and found a stairwell. Success! He swam to the bottom, his lungs beginning to burn, and found the door to the surface. Almost there! He pulled the handle. The door wouldn't budge! He tried again, harder and harder, forcing more and more air from his lungs. He put every muscle and every ounce of strength he had into the door, and it didn't budge. If he had seen the metal debris on the other side that was wedging the door shut, then he probably wouldn't have even bothered trying to open the door, but it seemed like better than nothing. Lungs exhausted, he pushed himself off of the bottom and towards the oxygen at the top. There truly was no escape. The air now was a bubble that afforded everyone enough room to keep their heads above water if they really tried at it. Some had given up already, long since drowned.  
  
Sarah couldn't believe what was happening, just a moment ago she was looking at a nice guy she had known for most of her life and chatting with her friends, and then there was fire and pain. With her head above water, she looked desperately for her friends. She could see Tina.  
  
"Tina!" she yelled, but Tina was too far away. The back half of the boat was already sloping down slightly, and those in that section were already out of air. She caught one last look at Mike. She could see that he was hurt and bleeding, but there was nothing she could do. Most of all she could see that he was afraid. Then the water went over her mouth, her nose, and then her eyes. All those who were still alive were thrashing about desperately under water, conserving what little oxygen they had left, trying to smash through the glass bottom of the boat which they now looked up at or in their death throes, thrashing around madly as water filled their lungs. Sarah accepted defeat. Nothing to do now. She looked up through the glass bottom. She could see the sky, the sun, the birds flying above. It was peaceful. Then a shadow passed over it all. Thoughts ran through her mind, of her mother, her father, her friends, Tina, Natalie, Rhonda, and then Mike. Memories went back to childhood, playing in the backyard with Mike and Lenore, carefree. Those were the good old days. A slight smile went across her face before she let out the last of her air and sucked in a lung full of salt water. Her body instinctively spasmed, thrashing, the legs kicking, the arms clawing at the throat. It was over quickly. She looked to the sky, soon overtaken by the water. She joined the other students who had already died, her corpse floating to the bottom of the boat moments before it too began to sink in a mere twenty feet of water.  
  
Within five minutes, fifty-three people had died. Death would have been proud… 


	4. Chapter 4: The Nightmare Realized

(Chapter 4: The Nightmare Realized)  
  
Mike opened his eyes, shuddering intensely. He was in a cold sweat. Had he been dreaming? He looked around from left to right, nothing. He was still alive, heart racing and breathing erratic, but still alive. It felt so real. He was vaguely aware of the hand on his shoulder. He saw Sarah still standing there, still grasping his shoulder. She looked the same as he did, her eyes were wide, she was looking around to see if it had truly happened.  
  
"What was that?" Sarah asked, afraid.  
  
"You saw it too?" Mike responded, perhaps even more afraid.  
  
"Were we dreaming?" Sarah asked again, looking for an answer in desperation.  
  
"We were talking about my dad, then there was the fire, and the-"  
  
"The water, and the sky. People were dying."  
  
"We died Sarah, something just happened."  
  
They both looked up slightly shocked as Mr. Christy spoke up.  
  
"Hey class! Now remember everyone, by the end of the day I want you to all have identified at least ten types of fish, five crustaceans and ten different mollusks. Extra credit goes to those who can properly identify and take a picture of a reptile, a mammal and/or a bird. Now there's glass all around you, so if you don't find at least one of those things then I guarantee you will sit in the dungeon for the rest of the semester." He smiled proudly.  
  
"Aww, come on Mr. Christy, how are we supposed to-" Nick started.  
  
"Keep to the bald jokes Nick," Mr. Christy cut in, "it's what you're good at."  
  
A sense of dread passed over both Mike and Sarah as the exchange between Nick and Mr. Christy continued as it did in the dream.  
  
"It's happening, what we saw is going to happen!" Sarah said, losing her coherence and getting excited.  
  
"We gotta get outta here," Mike said.  
  
"Hey Mike, I'm in your group man!" Tyler said proudly. As he approached Mike, he saw his friend a deathly pale color.  
  
"Hey Mike, what's wrong? You look like you just seen a ghost."  
  
Trying to remain as rational as he could, but quickly letting it give in to survival instinct, Mike started screaming.  
  
"EVERYONE'S GOT TO GET OFF OF THIS BOAT, IT'S GOING TO SINK!!!"  
  
There was a stunned moment of silence before everyone broke out into laughter.  
  
"Right Mike," Nick said, "and I can slam dunk a basket and score with whatever girl I want to."  
  
"No, he's serious, listen to me, everyone's got to get off this boat!" Sarah yelled.  
  
"We're all going to die!" Mike yelled.  
  
Clinton had been listening to the spectacle long enough, and felt like something needed to be done, and of course, he was the one to do it.  
  
"No, you're the one who's gonna die!" Clinton hollered, as he bounded on after Mike. He took a swing, punching Mike in the face, taking him down. Clinton landed a few more punches, hitting him in the chest and stomach. Mike could taste his own blood.  
  
Katie stood up from her seat, trying to comprehend the words that had been said. "We're going to die? Boat's going to sink?"  
  
Usually a nervous person, the previous words set her off, her breathing increased and she could feel an attack coming on. Her lungs started to close up, and she began to rasp. Mr. Christy bounded over to the fight, motioning for Ms. Rhodes to get back in her seat. He looked at Clinton, Mike and Sarah with angry eyes.  
  
"You three, get topside now!"  
  
"Mr. Christy, we got a problem here!" Rudy yelled.  
  
"What now?" Mr. Christy asked in all seriousness, glowering slightly to the back. Rudy stood over the seated Katie, whose breathing had become a hoarse wheeze.  
  
"Left… inhaler… on… top…" she managed to gasp out.  
  
"Shit," Mr. Christy muttered, "Rudy, you're a big guy, bring her up, some fresh air will probably do her good and get her her god damned medicine!"  
  
"Can do sir!" Rudy said enthusiastically. He gently lifted the tiny girl in his arms, and brought her up the steps behind Mr. Christy, Sarah, Mike and Clinton. Lori followed her boyfriend, trying to keep him out of trouble, while Tina got up to follow Sarah. She'd never seen her friend have an outburst like that before, it was out of character, and she seemed serious. On his way up, Mike locked eyes with Tyler.  
  
"Tyler, man, get off this boat, believe me…" Mike said as he was pushed off.  
  
"Sorry Mike, I need the grade," was all Tyler could say in response as his friend was escorted from the room.  
  
"Hey Nick!" Rhonda hollered as she moved to her photographer in the boats interior cabin.  
  
"Yo Rhonda," Nick said in response.  
  
"Bring that good camera you got and get some pictures, this could be something."  
  
Rhonda too ascended the steps, with Nick in tow. Darwin sat down, amused. Teenagers, depression, they freak out and have an episode. Fun stuff. He muttered a few curses before getting back to his video game. Stretching out, his foot hit a bag. Damned kids, don't leave anything where they should… He looked at it, it was Mr. Christy's leather satchel, he kept all of his paperwork and notebooks in there. If he's going to write anyone up, he's going to need his roll book. Bringing him the book could score you some points with Christy, though you'd look like an ass to the students. Screw it, you need to look good, get a good rating, transfer those credits to the community college. He grabbed the satchel and started up the stairs.  
  
"Well shit," Tyler said, watching a good portion of his class disappear to the topside of the boat. For a second he considered walking up top, to the point where he even stood up. Mike wasn't a liar, and he's always looked out for you before Tyler. You need the grade though. Thinking of graduating, he changed his mind quickly, simply sitting back down and looking out the side window. A seal swam by. He looked quickly around for the camera, yet he couldn't find it. Damn it, Mike's still got it… Screw it, you can miss a little bit of extra credit, just wait down here and enjoy the view.  
  
On the top deck of the boat, Mike, Sarah and Clinton stood in front of Mr. Christy. Lori stood by her boyfriend, but tried to ignore Mr. Christy's gaze as he yelled at the other students. Rudy laid Katie out on the floor, and administered her asthma medication.  
  
"Thanks," she said with a slight smile up to the handsome and huge football player.  
  
"No problem little lady, anytime," he said with his award winning smile.  
  
Rhonda, Nick, and Tina stood off on the side, watching the proceedings, with Rhonda furiously taking down notes and quotes. Darwin came to the top, holding Mr. Christy's bag in his hand.  
  
"Hey Mr. C, you forgot this," he said handing it off. The teacher dismissed the action. What a little brown nose, he thought, back to the task at hand.  
  
"Clinton, if I weren't your teacher I'd have kicked your sorry little ass a long time ago, believe me. Sarah, Mike, I'd expect better of you two, what the hell are you doing trying to start up a panic like that? Someone could have gotten hurt if you guys really did start something."  
  
"You should have seen it Mr. Christy," Mike said, "what I saw, what we saw, it was so real."  
  
"Right, the boat's going to sink, we're all going to die, please…" Nick said sarcastically.  
  
"Don't get me started on you Nick," Mr. Christy said.  
  
"Yes sir," Nick said with his usual lilt of sarcasm.  
  
"It was real, it's like how it really happens, the water, fire, people were drowning, I saw it too!" Sarah said insistently.  
  
"I think you've seen Titanic one too many times," Lori said snidely.  
  
"Shut up," Sarah said.  
  
"Make me!" Lori said defiantly with a smarmy grin. Not one to back down, Sarah started to take a step forward. She took another bound, and was about to meet the other girl's challenge when Tina held her back. Sarah screamed in frustration.  
  
"Hey, hey, hey, Sarah, back down, ease up girl!" Tina said as she tried to restrain her friend.  
  
"Psycho bitch," was all Lori could mutter as she dismissed the fight all together.  
  
"Aww, you want to have a real good time, go down below and wait a minute or two and it's gonna get one hell of a lot hotter!" Sarah shrieked.  
  
Lori laughed, while Clinton tried his best to hold his girlfriend back. Rhonda was the only one to look off in the distance, and what she saw made her eyes go wide.  
  
"Something tells me that Mike and Sarah might not be too far from the truth," Rhonda said as she pointed to a sight in the near distance. The others followed her gaze, and looked on in shock. A small seaplane, looking like nothing more than a van with wings and pontoons, was having trouble. It's propeller was sputtering and shooting out flames, while jet black smoke came from the engine. It bounced on the water a couple of times, increasing and decreasing its speed in alternate jolts. It flew head on towards the boat, and the eleven people on top simply looked on in terror. It was no more than a few seconds away.  
  
"Everybody in the water NOW!" Mr. Christy yelled before jumping into the water himself. Mike and Sarah followed quickly, with Darwin, Tina, Clinton and Lori shortly behind. Rhonda pushed Nick into the water, following him soon after. Rudy hefted Katie and threw her bodily into the water. He looked quickly around on the deck, seeing a box marked FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY. He broke it open and found a tightly tied up rubber cube. Bingo. He jumped overboard, carrying with him the rubber cube moments before the plane impacted.  
  
The explosion was huge, with both the plane and the boat being full of fuel. The pilot and co-pilot of the Coast Guard seaplane died instantly, while the jet of flame from the planes impact killed the captain of the boat and all those above decks. The fuel from the plane leaked down into the cracks into the ship, igniting the engine room and blasting outwards with another explosion. The charred skeleton of the aircraft wedged itself on the deck, jamming itself between the two doors to the underwater portion of the boat.  
  
The eleven in the water continued to swim away, attempting to avoid another explosion. Rudy pulled the cord on the rubber cube, where in a matter of seconds it opened up into a massive, rubber life raft. He climbed aboard, helping Mr. Christy in soon after. The pair of them pulled the remaining nine towards the raft, with some sitting on the raft itself, others hanging off. They watched as the boat rolled over, its bottom sticking out of the water, the glass of it glinting in the sunlight. Even from the distance, they could see the people under the glass trying to pound their way out.  
  
"We have to help them!" Rudy finally yelled.  
  
"We can't," Mr. Christy said, "That boat is sinking if you didn't notice it, you get anywhere near it and it's going to suck you in!"  
  
Like that, they watched the boat sink. Clinging to the raft they watched as dozens of hands pounded on the glass bottom of the boat, the flaming debris swirling around the boat as it sucked more and more water in. Eventually, the pounding hands stopped, and the boat disappeared into the water. On the raft, there was almost complete and utter silence from the shock. Katie was the only one making noise, as she wept and watched the horror before her. 


	5. Chapter 5: Survivor's Guilt

(Chapter 5: Survivor's Guilt)  
  
Excerpt from the Personal Diary of Mike Hooper:  
  
It's been a month already, feels like it happened yesterday. Every night, bad dreams, always the same. Fire, water, screams. Tyler still on the boat. His funeral was simple and sparsely attended, family, a few friends. His mom took it hard, she was screaming at me, asking me why I couldn't have saved him as well. I couldn't answer, I don't even know. He chose to stay. He was meant to die, we all were.  
  
The guy was my best friend, practically my brother, yet why am I more worried about myself now than I ever was about Tyler? Can't get it out of my head, but we cheated death, I should feel good, right? In this screwed up world, I just can't trust my gut, it's that feeling that something's out of place. Something's gonna happen. Then again, the whole universe is out of place, I saw something, well, Sarah and I saw something. That moment when we touched, something happened, we saw the same thing, I don't know but something happened in that brief moment of contact. We were one for a second. Who am I kidding, it was just a freak moment in the universe, I'm losing my mind out here. Everyone thinks I'm nuts, even my dad. Nothing has changed much for me, the others have all taken this differently, but I've remained more or less the same I think. More nervous than usual, but then again when am I not nervous? There's a bulletin board above my head, drawings and newspaper articles everywhere. All the stuff on the sinking, the list of people who have died, their obituaries. If I could only figure out the how and the why, there's something in the information that must be found. None of the articles mentioned the dream, or premonition, or whatever it was. Dad says I'm obsessed with the event, that it's taking over my life. Maybe it is.  
  
Nick, the guy's made a complete turnaround. Still cocky, still arrogant, but he's grateful to be alive. I'm pretty sure he's found religion by the sounds of it, though with him constantly calling at around midnight to thank me it's kind of getting irritating. He went from a near-constant class clown/jerk into a human being and a go to guy.  
  
Rhonda, she's tried to take this as professionally as possible, like it's just any other news story. Nick has told me that she cries when she thinks she's alone.  
  
A couple has emerged from the ruins, an unexpected one at that. Katie and Rudy, however in the world it could happen, seemed to have hooked up. Who'd have thunk it? She thanks him for saving his life, while Rudy seems to be the same giant teddy bear that he always was. He says finding his mortality has made him a stronger person and that he feels good for the upcoming football season. At least it's not half as irritating as those guys who thank Jesus for helping them shatter the spine of an opposing team member.  
  
Clinton and Lori, no update on them nor do I care to, they remain as above us all like always. Clinton is more violent than usual, and twice in the past month he's seen fit to kicking the crap out of me for no apparent reason.  
  
Tina is unchanged, still the hoity toity cheerleader. A "too messy" as dad says.  
  
Darwin too has dropped off the radar, you used to always see him around, always with that stupid grin, always eager to please and try and impress the teachers. I saw him once, and then he was gone. He ran like hell when he saw me too, weird. I guess I earned it.  
  
The two people out of the bunch that survived that I care about most have had the most drastic changes in their lives, all of which I feel responsible for. Mr. Christy lost his job, just shy of retiring too. Parents sued the school, citing that the field trip caused the deaths of their kids. It was an "accident", death's grand scheme, whatever you want to call it. Nevertheless, I've never seen a more depressed person in the world. He thinks he got the students killed, which is odd since his sending us up there saved our lives. Still, he's not letting it go. Then again, he has gone through 'nam and he still feels responsible for the guys he lost there, so it's probably a character thing. He was a damned good teacher, and one of the people I have most respect for in this world, and now all the others seem to wish he went down with the boat.  
  
Then comes Sarah, the most confident, beautiful and optimistic person in this world. One day she was bubbly cheerleader girl, then I touch her, we see death, we cheat death, and the next she's an angst-ridden Goth girl. Clothes are all black now, she's ditched the cheerleading squad, and she wears less girly jewelry and more chains and spikes now. Her personality has changed to the brooding, loner type and no one outside of Tina seems to be able to get to her. That smile she always had when she passed me in the hall is gone, the only words she'll say to me are, "Stay away."  
  
So, we've all got the survivor's guilt, or post-traumatic stress disorder, or some simple form of remorse over living when we shouldn't. We're alive, Sarah and I saved their lives. What's wrong with the picture? I don't know, it's just that feeling you get when you know that something is just not right. It'll be Christmas soon, families won't have their kids, their brothers, their sisters.  
  
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world…  
  
Signed, Mike Hooper, 12/16 


	6. Chapter 6: A Memorial Service

(Chapter 6: A Memorial Service)  
  
Nick and Rhonda sat on the roof of Nick's van, eating their McDonalds and watching as the people filed in through the parking lot. Massive signs on the side of the gym pronounced, "First Game of the Season Tonight!" and "Candlelight Vigle to be held at 7 for our lost friends." Looking at his watch, Nick read the time to be 6:50 pm. Almost there.  
  
"They misspelled vigil," Rhonda said with a slightly sarcastic laugh.  
  
"Yeah, I know," Nick said. He wiped secret sauce from his hands and picked up his camera, taking a shot of the sign.  
  
"Do you think everyone is going to show up?"  
  
"I doubt it. I know Rudy and Clinton have to be here, they're playing after all, and their girls will be with them, so that makes six of us, then there's Tina, she's got to cheerlead so that makes seven. They won't let Mr. Christy show his face around here for some reason, so he's not going to show, and Darwin has all but disappeared off of the face of the Earth."  
  
"So that leaves Mike and Sarah," Rhonda said with something of a shudder.  
  
"Yeah, our two visionaries and the people who saved our lives. I don't know if they're going to want to take part in the survivor's reunion, but I've got a feeling they're going to show," Nick said confidently.  
  
"Why?" Rhonda asked inquisitively.  
  
"Well, Sarah's got to show, after all her girlfriend is cheerleading and all that jazz," Nick said.  
  
"Aww, Sarah a dyke, that's just a rumor."  
  
"Rumor Schmumor, prove to me otherwise and I'll believe you, come on, look at all that black and leather and stuff."  
  
Trying to change the subject to fact rather than wild rumor, Rhonda brought up, "What about Mike, why's he going to show?"  
  
Nick looked around cautiously, then spoke into Rhonda's ear, "Because he's still looking out for us."  
  
Moving away from Nick slightly, Rhonda replied, "What does that mean?"  
  
"I don't know, but I've caught him watching us on a few occasions, and I've seen him watch the other survivors too, not like he's spying."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"You'd have to ask him, he saved our lives once, something tells me he thinks he needs to do it again" Nick said, before wrapping up all his garbage in the McDonald's bag and throwing it in a nearby trash can. Sliding down the roof of the van, he hit the ground hard.  
  
"Come on Rhonda," he said, "it's almost time."  
  
Rhonda followed him, shaking her head slightly in disbelief, "This is Mike we're talking about, goofy Mike, the guy who sits in the library and reads Michael Crichton novels, he's not Superman."  
  
"No," Nick said as he rooted through his backpack on the van's front seat, "but he saved our lives once because he had a vision, what's to say he won't have another?"  
  
-----------  
  
In the school's main quad, a good hundred yards away from the football field and it's adjacent parking lot, there sat what was affectionately called "The Tiger Patio", a grassy knoll that the school surrounded with a statue of the school's tiger mascot in the center. After the accident, it had been transformed from an area of school pride to an area of remembrance. Flowers, garlands, pictures of the deceased and signs from family and friends were left all around. Many of the flowers were withered and dead, the accident a fading memory in the grand scheme of things, but such close knit a community would not let the memory die. Mike sat looking at a picture of Tyler, one that he had set there. He was smiling, smiling his cocky smile and trying to prove his reputation as "The Sleaze King". Mike laughed.  
  
"Boy, those were good times, weren't they Tyler. Good times…"  
  
"Michael, is that you?" a feminine voice asked him from behind.  
  
He turned to see it's source, half expecting and hoping for Sarah, instead getting the smaller and less imposing Katie.  
  
"Hey Katie, how's it going?" he asked, trying to hold back the memories.  
  
"Not bad, how are you?" she asked apprehensively.  
  
"Been better, same as always. Everyone thinks I'm crazy, so do I."  
  
"I don't think you're crazy."  
  
"Do you believe me?" he asked with pleading eyes, getting no response from her face other than pity.  
  
"I believe you had a bad dream at the right time and we're all alive today because of you. Because of you, I have a boyfriend. I've never had a boyfriend before, let alone a football player and perhaps the nicest guy in the world. Are you going to the vigil?"  
  
Trying to force the sincerity, Mike said, "I'm happy for you, I really am. And yeah, I got the notice, and no I'm not going to the vigil."  
  
Normally quiet and rather aloof, Katie started speaking up with conviction, "Whatever you did, whatever happened, you've saved us, you gave us a second chance. I'm trying the best to make the most of my second chance, now why don't you?"  
  
Looking up at the small girl with great spirit, Mike couldn't help but smile.  
  
"All right, I'm there," he said as he stood up and joined her on the way to the field.  
  
-----------  
  
The stands were packed, not because of the game, but because of the vigil that had been organized to honor the memory of the lost students. The school's principal stood on a hastily erected podium, speaking to the families and student body, proclaiming the usual sympathies that one must during a tragedy, probably meaning only half of what he said. He was flanked by Nick, Sarah, Rhonda, Lori, Clinton, Katie, Rudy, Tina and Mike, the nine surviving students, each of them holding a lit candle.  
  
"Can we get on with this please, I've seen funerals move faster than this," Clinton muttered. Lori playfully elbowed him in the gut, cursing herself when hot wax from the candle leaked and burned her skin. Within ten minutes, candles had been passed out to nearly everyone on the home stands, while across the way supporters of the opposing team watched with a mix of reverence and utter amusement.  
  
"Why this senseless tragedy occurred, none of us will ever know, be it the lord's will, be it fate, or be it just happenstance. Though their lives were cut short before any of them should have, their memories shall live in our hearts and minds forever," the Principal Sawyer read from a simple script, "now, we would like a moments worth of silence before we start the game."  
  
Everyone bowed their heads, holding the candles and remaining silent. After about thirty seconds, the loudspeakers of the stadium were turned on and began to play John Lennon's "Imagine." The podium was struck down, the nine students and the administrator taking all their respective seats and positions on the field. With the memorial over, the game had begun. In more ways than one, the game had begun. 


	7. Chapter 7: The Storm Begins

(Chapter 7: The Storm Begins)  
  
The game was going on in full fury, the football players from both sides giving each other an utter pounding. Rudy did his best to utterly obliterate and crush the opposing players, while Clinton launched the football with better accuracy than usual. Still, the score was down and they were losing miserably, 28-7, and the time out that had been called did little to help. The Braiwood Tigers were known for many things, winning was not one of them. Mother Nature herself didn't even seem to support the team, as many could see California's winter storm clouds as they began to roll in, and could feel the air as it chilled and became moist.  
  
Tina kept up as best as she could with the rest of the cheerleading squad, but with the team as it was, there seemed to be no reason. She simply stood by and talked with Sarah in the front row of the bleachers, occasionally waving pom-poms into the air and shrieking out "Braiwood!" whenever her fellow cheerleaders would eye her suspiciously.  
  
"We've lost, again," Tina said.  
  
"Yeah, fifty seconds left, I doubt they could make a comeback even if we promised to flip up our tops," Sarah said.  
  
"I already promised that, didn't work," Tina said.  
  
"Right, who am I kidding, they can all draw your tits from memory," Sarah said with a snicker.  
  
Tina threw a pom-pom at her.  
  
"So, do you miss this?" Tina asked.  
  
"Cheering a losing team, hell no!" Sarah said enthusiastically.  
  
Tina smiled, then continuing, "No, I mean being a part of something, being, happy."  
  
Sarah sighed, shrugging her shoulders, "I'm in a weird place now, I've got to figure some things out."  
  
"And this whole Goth thing?" Tina said, intimating Sarah's new apparel.  
  
"I've been looking around for a new look," Sarah answered.  
  
"Keep looking," Tina said sarcastically.  
  
Up in the stands, Nick was not having fun. He sat in the back row, holding a camera with a telephoto lens and occasionally taking pictures of the players on the field, but there didn't seem to be any point really. He looked to the sky, pitch-black clouds were rolling in from the distance and he could hear some thunder. A cool breeze picked up, and he shivered.  
  
"Can I go home now?" he asked Rhonda as she sat above him, "It's cold and I'm tired. I already got pictures of the memorial and this game sucks, can I please go?"  
  
Rhonda sat on a metal bar that made up the back of the bleachers. It was a balancing act, one that could lead to a thirty-foot fall if done wrong, but she could keep it up. As always, she had her sports jacket on, proudly displaying her name and the "Braiwood Tiger's" on the front, while sporting CRAVEN in big letters on the back. She looked up from her notebook, and down at her trusty photographer.  
  
"Nick, there's only fifty seconds left, who knows, a miracle could happen. The skies could part and rain fire, utterly smiting the other team and we could be given this game by default. Or, an angry flock of birds could get up and tear the eyes out of everyone on the other team. Seeing as how in this crazy world, we still have managed to be here and are alive, I am tending to believe that anything can happen here. So, just watch the game, and hope for the best," she smiled and then half-heartedly kicked Nick back to attention.  
  
"Yes ma'am," he said sheepishly.  
  
He put his eye into the viewfinder, and quickly snapped another shot. You've seriously got to go freelance, he thought.  
  
On the ground, forty feet behind the bleachers, Mike stood in line for the snack bar. He sorted through the change in his hand, seventy, seventy-five, eighty cents. He felt around in his pocket, catching a single crumpled up dollar bill. Excellent, he thought, enough for a root beer and a Hershey's bar. You are in luck tonight, Mike thought with a smile. He looked back, hearing the sounds of the game and the roar of the crowd. Tigers are losing, again, he thought, like that's ever going to change. He could hear the cheerleaders, and he caught a quick glimpse of Sarah through the stands. She looked over, almost on instinct, and their eyes locked. It was only for a split second, one that she broke quickly. She looked away, almost in fear. Mike looked back to the snack stand. She's afraid of you Mike, what happened? As the next person got out of the line with their food in hand, Mike approached the glassed in booth. Ms. Archer, the geometry teacher stood behind a cash box with a wide grin on her face and rosy red cheeks.  
  
"Hiya Mike, what can I get you tonight?" she asked.  
  
He counted out his coins, then speaking, "A root beer and a Hershey's bar please."  
  
"All righty," she said as she turned her back, looking to the rack of snack foods for his selection. He set down his coins on the counter, and felt around inside his pocket for the dollar. It was there just a minute ago, wait, there it is. He shifted his shoulder slightly, but eventually he reached the bill. Pulling it out, he looked to the glass booth again. He was met with the sight of a flock of crows, flying around madly, their reflection caught in the glass. One of them cawed loudly at him. He looked around quickly, there was nothing there, just the sounds and the sights of the game. It was weird, it felt like…  
  
"That will be one dollar and eighty cents please!" Ms. Archer said cheerfully.  
  
"Excuse me?" Mike said, snapping back into things.  
  
"That's one eighty please."  
  
"Oh, sorry," Mike responded. He quickly handed over his money and got his sweets in return. You've got two options Mike, eat your food and leave in peace, or stick around for the dance. He opted for a compromise, making his way to a quiet spot underneath the bleachers. It was loud, but it was well shaded and peaceful, and by no means crowded. Sitting underneath the seats of everyone else, he ate his candy bar and drank from his cup of root beer.  
  
On the visitors side of the field, the families and friends of the San Delgado Titans cheered madly, victory on their mind. Their cheerleaders proudly led their audience in cheers, drowning out the screams of the home team. Their band played wildly, taking a brief intermission to change songs while the teams finished their time outs. Their bandleader, an aging, fat man by the name of Mr. Myers stood proudly before his well-trained army of band geeks and losers, or so he thought.  
  
"Congratulations everyone, victory is at hand, now why don't we step things up a bit. Page five everyone, and a one, and a two, and a…" he trailed off, bringing his conductors baton high and getting everyone in the groove. The music was lively and bouncy, The Beach Boys song resonating loudly and proudly with the audience.  
  
"I wish we had a band that actually cared," Tina said.  
  
"We do, it's just that, they don't," Sarah said.  
  
"My point exactly," Tina said, driving her point home.  
  
Sarah would have focused more on her friends snide remark, but something just wasn't right, she had an odd feeling that she hadn't felt since the incident.  
  
"What song is that?" Sarah asked.  
  
"Huh?" Tina asked, not hearing her friends question.  
  
"What song is that? It's familiar, sounds old, and you listen to all that old crap."  
  
Tina took a few moments to get the beat down, listening to it, before her face brightened up and she spoke with her usual bubbly enthusiasm, "Easy, Beach Boys classic. Help Me Rhonda. Why? Take up an interest in my old music?"  
  
Still feeling the sense of dread, Sarah looked around in the stands, looking feverishly for Rhonda. There she was, bright as day, sitting on the back railing of the top of the bleachers. Her orange and black jacket was a giveaway.  
  
"There's something wrong with this picture," Sarah said to herself. She shivered as the winds picked up, and she looked to the sky as the clouds rolled in darker. A single bolt of lightning streaked horizontally across the sky, radiating outwards like a spiders web. Within a manner of seconds, it let out with a booming clap of thunder, surprising everyone in the stadium.  
  
Humans weren't the only ones surprised by the display of natures fury. It set dogs barking and cats howling with its noise, as well as disrupting a flock of crows who had been bathing in a puddle on the visitors side of the stadium. Spooked, they took to the air, instantly buffeted by the winds. They fought the wind, sailing low across the stadium, over the field, coming so low to the point where a player could have reached a bird had they put their hand up. It was then that the players set up a play, Rudy tackled the other teams quarterback. The ball flew free of his hands, where the gentle giant Rudy bounded over, picking it up. The flock of crows that was flying straight into the bleachers had to fly upwards to avoid the standing ovation that the Tigers received.  
  
Rhonda was scrawling notes in one of her many notebooks, sketching a smiley face in the margins, when she heard the crowd roar and saw them stand. She looked up from the book, and into a large group of jet-black birds flying her way. They were cawing and flying around madly with absolutely no direction. They flew by her, giving her a sense of motion that she didn't know. Their simple flying all around her was enough to take her off guard, and take her off balance enough. She fell backwards, her whole world tilting on end. She fell through air, viewing the whole incident as if it were in slow motion. She screamed, rotating her body on the way down so that she looked down at the ground as it met her face. With moments left in her life, she could swear that she saw a skull quickly flash before her face.  
  
She hit the ground hard, instantly breaking her neck and ending her life. Blood ran freely from her nose and ears. Her body lay in a heap, the legs twitching slightly before going completely limp. Sitting underneath the bleachers, enjoying his highly sugared snack foods, Mike saw the whole scene unfold. He spit out his root beer and looked at the body.  
  
"Holy shit!" he yelled excitedly. He got up, approaching the body. Then he could hear the screams. He looked up, people were looking over the edge of the railing at the accident that had happened.  
  
"Someone call 911!" was all Mike could yell.  
  
People rushed in from the field, the word spread fast. The coach, the team, and the cheerleaders. Tina let out a scream when she saw Rhonda's corpse lying on the ground. Several others joined her. 


	8. Chapter 8: The Design

(Chapter 8: The Design)  
  
Mike lay down on his bed, staring at the ceiling, not quite sure what to make of anything. It was raining outside, a comforting sound that continued since the moment the investigation into the accident happened. Police came by the football stadium, asked everyone how it happened and what happened. Mike didn't mention the vision of the crows, fearing more people would think he'd lost his sanity. One hell of a way to start off the winter break, Christmas coming soon. You went in expecting a football game, a simple memorial service, and going home with two weeks of relaxing and minimal work. It's less than a week until Santa makes his rounds, and one more family was deprived of a daughter.  
  
He looked at the clock positioned on the dresser no more than three feet away. Two in the morning. Great. They say insomnia is a sign of depression, lack of appetite should follow. Sitting up for the umpteenth time, he looked at the bulletin board set up above his bed. Across the bottom he had pictures from the yearbook of the eleven survivors. In the middle there was one of Rhonda, all smiles and enthusiasm from what seemed like a long time back. She's dead.  
  
A tap at the window got his attention. He looked around and across the room, nothing. You're on the second floor of your house, no one short of an Olympic high jumper could reach the window, you just imagined it, Mike thought. It could be the rain, but the rain has a hard time hitting the glass. Then there was another tap, and he could see the distinct pattern of a small stone as it impacted on the glass. In some back corner of his mind he wondered how cliched it all seemed, though that thought was taken over by the curiosity over who might be throwing the stones. Opening the window, he caught one pebble right in the nose, loudly cursing.  
  
"Mike!" someone whispered loudly over the rain. Rubbing his nose, Mike looked out the window. There was a figure standing on the lawn, female, getting drenched in the fierce storm. Black skirt, black tank top, black leather jacket, black boots.  
  
"Mike, is that you?" she asked. As his eyes adjusted to the light, Mike could see who it was. It was Sarah.  
  
"Yeah, it's me," he said, "good aim, you just about broke my nose."  
  
She almost giggled, but Mike could tell that she was frightened thoroughly.  
  
"Sorry. Look, can I come in? I have to talk to you about something, and it's pouring like mad out here" she said with some hesitance.  
  
"Is it about Rhonda?" he asked.  
  
She was silent for a moment before speaking again, "Can I come in please?"  
  
Quickly, Mike closed his window. Pulling on a pair of sweat pants and a shirt, he practically ran down the stairs, stumbling in the process and landing hard on one knee. Reaching the front door, he snapped the lock off and opened it. Sarah, in all her glory, stood in front.  
  
"Hi, Sarah," he said nervously.  
  
"Hi Mike. It's freezing out here and I'm soaking wet, can I come in?"  
  
"Sure," he said, stepping back and letting her in as the water literally dripped from her.  
  
He closed the door quickly behind her as the wind and rain began to sneak in the front door, while she stood before him, taking off her boots.  
  
"You know, make yourself at home," he said sarcastically as she took off her boots.  
  
"Sorry," she said, "but I'm pretty soaked through here."  
  
"I'll get you a towel and some dry clothes if you'd like," he offered.  
  
"What I'd really like is a shower if that's all right," she said.  
  
"All right," he said, somewhat bewildered and avoiding the obvious question in mind, "won't your parents miss you?"  
  
"Right now, they're so hammered they couldn't give a damn if I was dead or alive," Sarah said, particularly lingering on the last part, "what about your dad?"  
  
"Out of town on business," Mike answered as honestly as he could, trying desperately to read what was going on with his one time friend. Seeing her nervousness, he realized what was going on, "You saw it too, didn't you?"  
  
She jerked her head around as if something wrong had been said, "Something like that."  
  
Rummaging through her small backpack, she pulled out a novel-sized book and tossed it to Mike. He nervously caught it, almost dropping it in the process, but quickly catching it. It's cover was dark with white print, and in the dark it was hard to read. What he could see was that it had several post-it notes sticking out of it at various points, set there by Sarah.  
  
"I suggest you read the passages with the post-its on them, you might find them interesting. Is the bathroom still where I remember?" she asked.  
  
"Yeah, up the stairs, down the hall to the right, across from my room."  
  
"Gotcha," she said with a faint hint of a smile, one that almost got Mike to smile back. She bounded up the stairs and made a quick turn. Mike could hear the door slam shut and soon water was running. He followed in her footsteps up the stairs, walking to the bathroom and politely tapping on the door.  
  
"Sarah?" he said.  
  
"Yes?" she said back, slightly strained.  
  
"There's a bathrobe hanging on the door, feel free to use it when you're done."  
  
Stepping away from the door, he turned to go to his room, then hearing the door to the bathroom open. Sarah stuck her face through a gap in the door (trying her best to hide the rest of her body from view) and was smiling pleasantly, the first smile Mike had seen from her since the ship sank.  
  
"Thanks Mike," she said genuinely, before withdrawing her head and going back into the bathroom and to her shower.  
  
Sitting on his bed, Mike turned on the reading lamp above it. The title and cover of the book shone brightly, making him shudder. It was a skull, but not a normal one, it was darker than normal and had a pervading sense of evil to it. The cover read:  
  
THE DESIGN: The Curse of Flight 180 and other disasters  
  
By Alex Browning and Clear Rivers  
  
Edited and Foreword written by Kimberly Corman-Burke  
  
-----------------  
  
For a few minutes, Mike listened to the water as it run through the nearby wall, trying to make sure Sarah was all right. Then, taking her suggestion, he flipped through the pages that she had marked. The stories within seemed almost random, all relating to death and destruction, natural disasters and man-made accidents. The greater portion of the book was written about Flight 180, the mid-air explosion that had lent itself to one of the greatest modern urban legends, that of the premonition and the death curse. The book was written by the two people who had successfully gotten off of the plane and avoided the curse, having written the book while in seclusion. According to the foreword though, they had both since died. Flipping through more pages, he read in grim detail of the series of accidents that led to the deaths of all but two of the seven who had left the plane before takeoff, though as the foreword indicated, the other two eventually died themselves. There were more incidents mentioned, historical ones. A man who had a premonition about the Titanic sinking and cancelled his ticket, only to be run over by a horse-drawn carriage. A young Japanese girl having a premonition of the Hiroshima attack and convincing her family to leave town and avoid the blast, all killed when a plane fell out of the sky and hit them. Stories went on, bus crashes, shipwrecks, volcano eruptions, the 9/11 attacks, an island infested with plague, train wrecks, tornadoes, all seemingly disconnected incidents with similar ties. They all had individuals who had premonitions and avoided their imminent death and often took people with them. Then one by one or all at a time, they were killed under mysterious circumstances, all with a seeming pattern as to the order of death. Death's Design as the book stated. With wide eyes, Mike kept thumbing from page to page, enthralled and alternately terrified with what the book had written.  
  
"Yeah, I thought so," Sarah said as she dried her hair with a towel.  
  
Looking up, Mike saw Sarah standing in the doorway dressed in nothing but a large white bathrobe with "Property of Bates Motel" written jokingly above one breast pocket, wrapping her hair with a towel.  
  
"Why me? Why not Tina, she's your best friend," he said.  
  
"Because she wouldn't believe me, and she wasn't always my best friend," she said.  
  
In the brief yet slightly awkward moment of silence, the two just stayed staring at each other, sizing each other up, not having seen either vulnerable in a great many years. In the back of his mind, Mike admired her beauty, same as it had been since he first knew her. Looking back at her old friend, Sarah realized that he was not half the geek she once remembered him to be, he could be cute if he were to lose a few pounds and get contacts, maybe get a haircut. After a brief moment, both realized they were staring, each quickly looking away. Looking to the book, Sarah tried to change the subject.  
  
"That's some scary shit, huh?" was all she could manage to get out as she intimated the book.  
  
"Yeah, I know. That's what's happening here, isn't it?" Mike asked even though he knew the answer.  
  
"I think so. Rhonda falling could have been an accident or a coincidence, but I had a something like a premonition, I saw a sign," Sarah said with some fear as she sat down in a chair.  
  
"Me too," Mike said, "reflected in a piece of glass, I saw a sign."  
  
"Just like the book," said Sarah, "it's all happened before. We cheated death once, it's not going to let us get by."  
  
"But it says there's a design, and if we can figure it out we might be able to be one step ahead of death," Mike stated.  
  
"Exactly," Sarah said as she looked above Mike's bed. The bulletin board caught her eye, the pictures and articles all seeming too familiar.  
  
"I got one just like it," Sarah admitted shamefacedly.  
  
Mike looked where she was looking and looked away quickly sheepishly.  
  
"Dad thought it was a little obsessive," he said.  
  
"It is, but it might hold the key," she said as she stood up. Looking to the board, she tore down a newspaper picture of the eleven survivors floating in the raft.  
  
"Eleven of us got off of that boat. Rhonda's gone, that leaves ten. You, me, Nick, Mr. Christy, Lori, Clinton, Darwin, Rudy, Katie and Tina are still a part of whatever the design is. Now, as history seems to hold it, the order of death tends to be in the order that they should have died, am I right so far."  
  
"Yes, but…" Mike said as he flipped to the book's foreword, "the car wreck that this Burke girl talks about, it had people who should have died yet survived, but they were killed in reverse order."  
  
"Also true, which means that the order is not constant," Sarah stated, "but finding out where everyone else was sitting on the boat could help us determine what the order is or is not. Do you remember where everyone sat?"  
  
Probing his memory to the best of his ability, Mike couldn't remember.  
  
"Sorry," was all he could say.  
  
"Damn it," Sarah said, "neither do I."  
  
Thinking back, Mike tried his best to remember every detail about the day he would never forget, water, drowning, screaming, Nick and Mr. Christy joking. Nick. Something about Nick. Something that Nick always had…  
  
"Nick!" Mike yelled.  
  
"What?" Sarah responded in a bewildered manner.  
  
"Nick! The guy's always got that camera with him and he's always taking pictures, I remember he was at the end of the boat and I remember seeing a flash from the end. It must have been him."  
  
Suddenly getting excited, Sarah's face brightened, "Let's do it, let's get Nick!"  
  
She started to get up, at which point Mike himself got up and had to practically restrain his friend.  
  
"Hey, hey, I don't know if you realized it but it's about three in the morning, all reasonable people, Nick included are probably asleep now."  
  
"Yeah, but if he can help prevent another one of us from dying, then I'd like to see it," Sarah said, yawning and visibly tired.  
  
"Well neither of us is going to be any good without any sleep. Let's get a few hours of shuteye and then get a move on, all right?" he asked as he tried to reason with Sarah.  
  
"All right," she said, "but watch for the signs. Either of us could be next, we look out for each other."  
  
"Just like old times," Mike said as he forced a smile.  
  
"Like old times…" Sarah said, trailing off, "can I sleep in here?"  
  
After a moments consideration, Mike said, "Sure, no problem, I'll just shack up on the couch downstairs."  
  
"No Mike," Sarah said, "I'd like it if you were here too. We've shared beds when we were kids, remember?"  
  
"Yeah," Mike said as he looked up and down her body and kicked himself in his mind, "but you were a bit different then."  
  
"And so were you," she said, then smiling her evil smile and grinning, "don't worry, I promise you won't get any tonight."  
  
"Just the same," Mike said, "it'll be a little awkward. You have the bed, I'll sleep in the chair."  
  
"Suit yourself," she said as they traded positions, Sarah walking to the bed while Mike walked over to his chair, taking a pillow with him. As Sarah crossed the room, she caught her foot on a hat that had been left there.  
  
"Honestly Mike, I thought you would have cleaned your room once in the last six years," she said absentmindedly, throwing the hat across the room. The piece of clothing sailed far, landing on Mike's clock radio. Sarah and Mike both jumped slightly as the radio jumped to life, spouting Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust". Going over to turn it off, Mike saw that the numbers on the face of the clock were shuffling around rapidly. They stopped on a combination of lines and dots that made up C7.  
  
"C-seven," Sarah said, "what's that mean?"  
  
"It's a sign," Mike said with great fear.  
  
No more words were exchanged in the night, the pair resigning themselves to a fitful sleep while spending the rest of their time mentally trying to figure out what C7 meant. 


	9. Chapter 9: C7

(Chapter 9: C7)  
  
Darwin Wong awoke sitting at his desk, right where he had fallen asleep the night before. His head was buried in the same book on abnormal psychology, and his drool had almost permanently glued a page to his cheek.  
  
"Not again," he said absentmindedly as he wiped his cheek of the saliva. The liquid had obscured some of the words on the page, but most of them were still readable. Most of them. Stepping up from the desk, he arched his back, listening to the vertebrae in his back crack as they readjusted to a position that was more livable, alternately yawning and scratching his chest. Getting up and back to the world of the living, he walked into his bathroom. The apartment wasn't one of the best places in the world to live, but it wasn't the worst either. Darwin was proud of it's solitude above all else, near silence in the halls and rooms despite being located next to a college campus. A COMMUNITY college campus he reminded himself, but as the bumper sticker on his car said, "Hey, it's still college."  
  
Shivering for a second as his bare feet hit the cold tile, Darwin walked to the mirror. With his feet slipping out from underneath him, he landed firmly on his butt in a thin puddle of water. He cursed himself, looking to the toilet. One of the feed hoses behind it had been leaking slightly, a spray of water hitting the wall, leaking down and then pooling on the floor. Turning a valve, he got it to shut off. Cursing himself again, he got up and made a mental note to get a plumber in to check it out, then looking into the mirror. Jesus man, he thought, you've really let it go. He was growing a pretty decent beard that was covering up most features of his face, but still it was visible that he hadn't gotten sun in quite some time and that his diet consisted primarily of junk foods, the little sores making themselves prominent on his face. Post traumatic stress disorder, that's what the doctor called it. You've experienced a very traumatic event Darwin, he said, take some time off and relax. Yeah, relax, all the time waiting for the event to creep back up and bite you in the ass again. Never leave the apartment except for classes, always ordering out pizza, never bathing, always hearing the drowning screams, watching their hands pound on the glass, remembering Val shove you into the water. He shuddered as he saw what he had become.  
  
"Man you're ugly," he said, laughing as his image laughed back in the mirror.  
  
Resigned to make some changes, he opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out a pair of scissors, six inches long, shiny and with a very sharp point. He looked at them, briefly considering running them across his throat and ending it all.  
  
"No, stop it, you're better than this Darwin, just stop it!" he said, closing his eyes and slamming the scissors to the bathroom counter. Music, music always calms the beast. He walked back into the room, pulled on a set of walkman headphones and clipped the walkman itself to the waistband of his pants. Turning the volume up, he listened pleasantly to Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper". As the song began, he started singing along and getting into the music instead of paranoid, suicidal thoughts. Getting his act together and with breath and heartbeat slowed, Darwin looked into the mirror and picked up the scissors again. Using them as they should be used, he trimmed his beard, taking large amounts of hair off of the sides of his face and chin.  
  
Looking into the mirror at a man with less of a beard and more of a misshapen stubble, he cocked a grin.  
  
"You're looking good there Tiger," he said into the mirror, spinning the scissors around on one finger like a gunfighter. With the same hand, he balled up his fist and slammed it down to the counter with the point of the scissors up.  
  
"You bad," he said with mock enthusiasm.  
  
With no warning whatsoever, his feet slipped out from underneath him once more, water making his feet slip across the floor. He watched as the world around him rotated, his point of view switching from looking at himself in the mirror and watching as his eye shot towards the scissors in his hand. Oh god, he thought as time seemed to slow down, it's going to go into your head.  
  
Sticking one hand out, Darwin pushed himself away from the counter, slamming against the wall and landing on the floor with a heavy thud. Not good. The Walkman hit the floor separately, its batteries spilling out onto the floor. Not good.  
  
He looked at the scissors in his hand, seeming more like weapons than items of beautification than ever before. It might be a good time to use something a bit less lethal, he thought. Tossing the scissors to the floor, Darwin managed to stand up and root further through his medicine cabinet, searching in vain for any disposable razor blades. No such luck. The store's too far away and the mini-mart was still closed after the last robbery. As his mind searched through various choices, an obvious one presented itself in a matter of seconds.  
  
"Duh, the vending machines!" he said.  
  
Rooting through his wallet, Darwin found two one-dollar bills and pulled them out, running into the hallway and down one flight of stairs. There stood a bank of simple vending machines, one for Snapple and bottles of water, one with soda's, two that had snacks, and one with various random school supplies. The apartment managers definitely had the students in mind as their audience, and were making a sizable profit off of the vending machines with products aimed at the student body. Between a packet of pens and a deluxe sized pad of Post-It notes was a simple toiletry kit of a small bar of soap, a tooth brush, some tooth paste, and a disposable razor. At one dollar and eighty cents, it was somewhat of a rip-off, but Darwin knew he needed it. Inserting his two dollars, Darwin lined up the letter and number that he would need to press to make the choice.  
  
"C7, excellent," he said.  
  
He pressed the buttons, and the large machine began to work it's magic. The coil of metal that held the items in spun slowly, bringing the plastic packet with the toiletry items inside closer and closer into falling range. Watching as the machine took its high time, Darwin saw a shadow pass in the reflection on the machines glass face. He looked over his shoulder, seeing no one.  
  
"Hello?" he asked apprehensively, looking around desperately for anything that could have caused the shadow. His inquiry was answered with somewhat of an echo from the hallway as his voice bounced off the walls, no more, no less. Shrugging it off, he looked back at the machine and instantly grimaced.  
  
"Damn it!"  
  
The packet of toiletries had tilted forward at the end of the metal coil, but it had leaned itself up against the glass face, almost taunting Darwin. Getting reasonably pissed at the machine, he hit the glass hard. No luck. He hit it again, still the packet didn't fall. He watched inside as his hits got almost every other item inside the machine rattling and swinging, just not what he needed. A small skull key chain swung back and forth, while Darwin simply looked at the trinket and looked back. The skull was smiling, it's deep sunk in eyes seemingly looking into Darwin's own. He shuddered, then going back to the task at hand. He hit the machine harder, the packet moving slightly, but not enough to fall. Well, Darwin thought, this could take a bit of ingenuity. You can waste two more dollars to push the stuff down, or you could loosen it the old fashioned way. He chose the latter.  
  
Setting both of his feet apart to allow leverage, he grabbed the top of the machine. Using all the strength he possessed, Darwin tilted the machine, getting ever closer to dropping the razor into reach.  
  
"Almost there," he said, "almost there…"  
  
At nearly a thirty-degree angle, the heavy metal machine was balanced on two out of its four metal legs. Not intended for such stresses, they started to bend and warp as Darwin edged the machine down even further.  
  
"Excellent," Darwin said as he could hear the packet drop, not knowing that would be his last word. The legs of the machine gave out then, breaking off and dropping the machine flat down on it's face. The last sensation Darwin Wong sensed was surprise, as the machine came barreling down on him, pressing him tight between the ground and it's metal frame. Every organ, every bone, every piece of Darwin was thoroughly crushed by the falling machine. Pens and trinkets mixed into a thick slurry on the ground with human blood and innards.  
  
A sign on the side of an adjacent machine read:  
  
"Warning! Do not rock or tilt! Rocking or tilting might cause injury or death!" 


	10. Chapter 10: The Design Revealed

(Chapter 10: The Design Revealed)  
  
Nick Romero sat at the opposite side of the table as Mike and Sarah had and listened as they laid the whole scheme of things out. They saw it happen before it happened, the wreck, Rhonda, and some other clue they had yet to identify. Then they brought out information relating to a history of incidents such as their current situation, including the infamous urban legend of Flight 180. Sipping his coffee and trying his best to keep his hand from rattling too much, Nick poured in another packet of sugar.  
  
"So what you're saying is that because we were all supposed to die in that boat, but since we didn't, death is out to get us again and we're all going to die a horrible if overly-elaborate death in the coming days?" Nick said, trying to keep his voice as steady as possible.  
  
"Yes," Mike said.  
  
"And you need the pictures I took the day of the accident to see if you can find out who is going to die when so you can try and break the pattern," Nick said with some hesitance.  
  
"Yes Nick," Sarah said, trying to sound reassuring, "I know this sounds crazy, but-"  
  
"Actually," Nick said cutting in, "this is about the sanest thing I've heard in some time. You guys saved my life from some form of divine intervention, you saw this in a vision and now you're having visions again. I don't want to die, nor do I plan on dying anytime soon. I already lost one person I know and cared about, I don't plan on losing any more of them anytime soon."  
  
The pair who sat across from him looked a little shocked by his bluntness, but soon got back to smiling.  
  
"I'm glad you're with us on this Nick," Mike said, "we could save some lives if we can figure out the design."  
  
Reaching into his backpack, Nick began pulling out dozens of black and white eight by ten's, spreading them out on the table.  
  
"This is everything from the day of the accident, at least everything I took inside the boat. I hope you guys can see something in one of these."  
  
No sooner had he spread them out than Sarah and Mike started ripping through them, trying to find anything that could be of use. The pictures were scattered in content at best. One of a seal. One taken of Nick's feet. One taken looking down Tanesha's cleavage, to which Nick blushed slightly. Another one of them pulling a net full of fish and mollusks aboard the ship. All shots from the boat, none of them any use. Finally reaching the bottom of the pile, Mike found a picture that got his attention. It was one taken when they were underwater, in the glass bottom portion of the boat. Nick had stationed himself at the front and took the picture looking back, getting a look at everyone and where they all sat. Rhonda was at the end of the boat by the engine room  
  
"Guys, I got it," Mike said as he showed them the picture.  
  
"The explosion started here, near the engine room and traveled up the boat. Rhonda would have been the first to die when the accident happened," he continued.  
  
"So it's going in order," Sarah said with a sudden realization.  
  
"It's going by where we all would have died in the accident, by where we sat when the boat tilted up."  
  
"Well that's great guys," Nick said anxiously, "but what does that mean?"  
  
"It means," Mike said referring to the picture, "that Rhonda was the first to die and that the design is continuing. It means that Darwin is next, then the rest of us."  
  
There was a nervous and awkward moment of silence as the three sat at the table and didn't know what to say. Mike started to back down in his seat, already defeated. Trying to comfort her friend, Sarah gave him a warm hug.  
  
"We're not going to let it come to that Mike," Sarah said, "we're going to watch for the signs and try and prevent this from happening, it can happen. We're going to beat this together."  
  
"Okay guys, first thing's first," Nick said, "I'm all for the pair of you going off and getting married now, but we need to find Darwin and make sure he doesn't' screw up."  
  
As Mike and Sarah parted, they locked eyes, trying perhaps to comfort each other. As he stood up, Mike took the picture with the plan revealed, folded it up and put it in his pocket. Nick, Sarah and Mike then left their seats in the comfort of Kaldi's Coffee House (or as the neighborhood often called it, Skaldi's) and hit the sidewalk. The rain had long since stopped, the ground now wet while the sky chose to remain a dull and frightening gray. Traffic that drove along the streets was minimum, the vehicles that did pass along spraying large amounts of water into the air. As she walked further out onto the sidewalk, Sarah got hit in the face with a large drop of water. Looking up, she saw that it came dripping from one of the large windows of the office complex that Kaldi's was built under, with water still dripping off of it steadily. In the moment that she looked at the glass, she saw a reflection she had not expected, that of a white pickup truck crashing into the curb. She could hear the metal rend and see things fly from the back of it and onto the sidewalk. Looking to the street, she could see no truck and no debris, the traffic pleasant and subdued as it tended to be on rainy days.  
  
"Hey Sarah!" a feminine voice yelled excitedly. Sarah looked down the sidewalk to see that it came from Tina, who was bounding up excitedly in her heavy rain slicker. Tina came up and began babbling away at a mile a minute, not quite as fast as usual but enthusiastic as always.  
  
"Girl, this has been one hell of a storm huh, I mean I'm wet all over here and not in the good way either," Tina said enthusiastically.  
  
"Tina, there's something we need to tell yo-"  
  
"I mean bad things happen in storms, look at Rhonda last night, then there was the accident down by the community college, it's like a full moon or something, all the weird stuff happens during a storm," Tina continued.  
  
With a sick feeling in his stomach, Mike remembered that Darwin lived near the community college, where he was attending classes, "What happened by the college?"  
  
"Oh," Tina said as she first realized that Nick and Mike were both standing there, "there were a bunch of ambulances and fire trucks by one of the apartments nearby, so as always you gotta ask, kind of like a car wreck. Anyhow, I go up and they say this guy was trying to tip something free out of a vending machine and it tipped over and crushed him. Like a bug. They said it was one hell of a mess."  
  
Mike remembered the night before, seeing C7 pop up on his clock radio. C7, like a choice on a vending machine. Letter meets number. Dear god, it got Darwin.  
  
"Darwin," Sarah said softly as she looked to Mike, "Mike, who's next?"  
  
Nervously reaching into his pocket, Mike pulled out the picture and began to unfold it. As he lined up who sat where, all he could say was, "I am."  
  
---------  
  
Clinton had been drinking the night before, and remained a little tipsy. Rhonda was a good chick, one hell of an athlete and a good writer. Why do the good have to die young? He sped around the streets of Braiwood on his motorcycle, particularly enjoying going through the deep puddles. She would have died a month earlier if you hadn't fought Mike. Mike, it's all his fault. You're alive now because of him Clinton, he thought, but Rhonda died. Why couldn't Mike save her this time like before? Why?  
  
Taking one corner a bit too fast, Clinton could see that he was approaching Kaldi's. Get some coffee, shake it off, wake yourself up and take away the hangover. As he revved up the engine, he could see Mike standing with Sarah, Nick and Tina. God, what an ass. Why don't you show him who's boss Clinton, that'd make things right.  
  
"Yo Mike!" he yelled as he lifted one hand from the handlebars of his bike, using it to flip the bird to Mike. That's showing him Clinton, you got him this time. Smiling and quite proud with himself, Clinton revved the engine of his bike and proceeded to speed through another puddle. Unbeknownst to him as he drove through the water, the puddle hid a large pothole. As the front wheel of his bike sped through the hole, it caught on one end and upended the bike, throwing Clinton through the air.  
  
"SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!"  
  
---------  
  
Mike and the others simply watched as Clinton flew through the air off of his bike and rolled another forty yards down the street, his helmet, leather jacket and jeans having kept him quite protected from the road rash one would normally get, though he would definitely be a bit worse for wear later. What did catch their attention was his bike as it flipped over in the pothole and skidded further along the road. Sarah watched with certain horror as the bike continued on its path, right into an oncoming white pickup truck with the words "Campbell's Medical Supply" written on it. The truck swerved, losing traction in the rain and impacting the bike with its front fender. Spun slightly, the truck lost control and slammed into the corner near Kaldi's. The group all jumped out of the way, in separate directions. Standing up, Mike watched as the truck settled, pieces falling off and the driver stumbling out quite dazed. As the vehicle lurched to a final stop on the curb, a tank of compressed oxygen that had been in the flatbed tilted and fell off and hit the ground. Hard. The regulator top immediately broke off, sending the tank flying like a rocket in Mike's direction.  
  
He hardly had time to react as the compressed air exiting the tank rocketed it towards his face. At the last instant, he dodged it slightly, the tank only grazing the side of his head and instantly bloodying his face and knocking him unconscious. He fell to the ground in a heap.  
  
"Mike!" Sarah screamed.  
  
The tank continued on its way, busting through Kaldi's front window and ricocheting off of a chair. Travelling at a few hundred miles per hour, it turned upwards and shot through the ceiling like a bullet. Finally losing some pressure, it turned once more and shattered through one of the massive windows of the office complex. Having lost most pressure by then, it flew about in the street, hit the brick wall of a nearby building and died out. Sarah rushed to Mike's side, with Nick and Tina in tow.  
  
"Jesus Christ, that's how it happens?" Nick said bewildered.  
  
"How what happens?" Tina said, completely confused.  
  
"It, death, we're all going to die Tina, we cheated death before on the boat when we were supposed to die, now death is coming back for us. Rhonda, Darwin, they're already dead."  
  
Tina looked around and then started to laugh, "Girl, what've you been smoking?"  
  
"She's not crazy, it's happened before," Nick said trying to prove a point, but not quite getting it out.  
  
One large shard of glass hung from the window frame, barely held in it's place by a simple piece of plastic. It swung in the wind slightly, held in place by tenuous threads. As it swung back and forth, a simple gust of wind knocked it out of place, sending it down towards the prone Mike like a dagger from the sky.  
  
A shadow passed in front of Sarah's eyes, a curious one she had never seen before. It seemed, unnatural. She had a feeling that it wasn't over yet. Looking up, she caught the glint of light as it passed through the falling piece of glass. With cat-like reflexes, she reacted, grabbing Mike and pulling him out of the way. The massive shard of glass exploded on the ground right where Mike had been lying just moments before.  
  
As he regained some consciousness, he could see Sarah looking down upon him.  
  
"Am I in heaven?" Mike asked groggily.  
  
"Not quite," Sarah said with a smile, "you all right? We almost lost you there."  
  
"I'm fine," Mike said, trying to sit up and wincing as he steadied himself, "one hell of a headache, but I'm all right."  
  
As he sat there, a realization came to mind, "I was next. I should be next."  
  
"I intervened," Sarah said, "I had a premonition and I intervened. It's one way of cheating death."  
  
"But it then goes to the next person in line," Mike said with further sobering dread as he looked around the group.  
  
"All right, time out everyone," Tina said, "just what in the hell is going on here? You're all talking some crazy alien language about death, intervention, premonition, what in the hell is going on here?"  
  
"Tina, just listen to me again, we cheated death before when we were supposed to die on that boat. We aren't supposed to be alive. When that happens, death has a way of circling back and killing all those who avoided the design."  
  
Backing away from Sarah, Nick and Mike, Tina looked accusingly at them, almost irrationally. Looking to Nick, the only one who wasn't saying anything, she asked, "You really believe this voodoo bullshit?"  
  
"Every word of it," he said deadpan.  
  
"Tina, I've never lied to you before, I'm on the level here, just believe me and we'll take this one step at a time," Sarah said as she started to get up and walk towards Tina.  
  
As they talked below, the windows of the office complex above them shuddered, several knocked a bit out of place in their standings by the impact of the flying oxygen tank. One fell completely out of its frame, remaining vertical in its descent to the ground.  
  
"That's crazy, you're all crazy, and I'm getting the fu-" Tina said as the falling window hit her. Coming down on it's edge, it sliced through her like a hot knife through butter, going through her shoulder and slicing her through to between the legs. The glass itself shattered upon hitting the ground, sending the two vertical halves of Tina flopping to the ground, spraying blood and innards every which way. Sarah, Mike and Nick became drenched in her blood and dodged shards of bloodied glass as they flew their way. The three of them simply stood confused as they looked at the bloodied halves of their one time classmate and friend. Looking at her former best friend lying in pieces on the ground, Sarah could do nothing but cry for a few seconds before breaking down and fainting as she fell to the ground. 


	11. Chapter 11: War Stories

(Chapter 11: War Stories)  
  
Braiwood General Hospital was not a big one by any means, but it was well supplied and competently staffed, although traffic was typically slow. A few homeless people looking for someplace warm and a bath as well as the odd drunk driver who drove into a lamppost was all they usually got on a daily basis. In the last two days they had been busier than normal, a relief to some who feared them closing down and a shock to the otherwise slow medical facility. Three dead bodies and three injured in a related series of car accidents. The numbers were higher than normal, but no one was willing to complain.  
  
Mike had his forehead thoroughly wrapped in bandages and was on serious painkillers, having suffered a good head injury when the can shot around and hit him in the head. Clinton was bruised and cut in a few places, from his motorcycle turning over, but otherwise he was in pretty good shape. Sarah had hit her head when she lost consciousness. Due to the fact that the hospital wasn't very busy, each had their own room, and each would have to stay overnight for monitoring over their head injuries.  
  
Mike couldn't sit still, he needed to get up and make sure everyone was all right. The least he wanted to do was make a phone call, to tell Mr. Christy to watch out and stay safe. That wouldn't work of course, Mr. Christy had the logical, scientific mind, but it was worth a shot. Then again there were the others, Rudy, Katie, Lori, they would all need to be convinced. Clinton was so damned scared out of his mind due to the accident, that the few moments that Mike had to talk to them as they were being treated gave him time to tell the story. Most of the hospital staff stared on and laughed silently about Mike and his story, while Clinton all but took it as the gospel.  
  
Mike was musing about Clinton's quick turnaround from jerk to believer when he heard the door open. Turning around, he could see one of the many well-meaning if not overly sweet candy-stripers came in. She was nice enough, but she was forcing the kindness more than it needed to be.  
  
"Hello Mr. Hooper," she said, "how are we feeling?"  
  
"Got one hell of a headache, but other than that I'm up and willing to go," he said.  
  
"Sorry, but we're going to need to keep you overnight for observation. Are you sure there isn't anyone you want us to call?" she asked, feigning concern.  
  
"Yeah, I'm sure. Dad's out of town and I have no clue where he is. Is that all?"  
  
Her smile faltered a bit and Mike caught the beginnings of a scowl, something he smiled inside about.  
  
"You have a visitor, claims to be a friend of the family, would you like to see him in?"  
  
After considering the option, and figuring he didn't have anything to lose, Mike said, "Sure, let 'em in."  
  
The candy-striper exited the doorway, letting a new one enter. It was a big man, older, and from what Mike could tell most certainly balding. There was no mistaking who it was.  
  
"Hello Mike," the man said.  
  
"Hello Mr. Christy," Mike said, "what brings you here?"  
  
"I heard about the accident and wanted to see if you were all right," Mr. Christy lied.  
  
Seeing apprehension in Mr. Christy's face, Mike thought he had the perfect chance and spoke, "Look Mr. Christy, I have something to tell you."  
  
"Have you figured out the order yet?" Mr. Christy asked out of nowhere.  
  
Taken completely aback, Mike looked on curiously and asked, "What?"  
  
"The order we're supposed to die in. You had a vision, you got us all to get off the boat, it blew up, and now the survivors are starting to die in the order that they should have died on the boat, am I on the right path?"  
  
"Yes," Mike replied.  
  
"I heard along the grapevine about Rhonda, and I know you were in a car accident, has anyone else been killed yet?"  
  
"Yeah," Mike said, reaching to the table beside his bed and picking up the picture. He pointed to the people as he spoke, showing along the design.  
  
"Rhonda died at the game last night, Darwin at his apartment this morning, I was supposed to be next but Sarah intervened, so it went and got Tina. How do you know all this?"  
  
Sitting down in a nearby chair, Mr. Christy exhaled unhappily. The story had been building up in him for the longest time, one he never wanted to tell and one he had always kept a secret. Since it was happening again, he sighed and figured now was as good a time as any to tell the story.  
  
"It started back in Vietnam. There were eight of us in the chopper, Deveaux and Padilla the pilots, then there was 'Sarge' Brigman, Private Masters the radio operator, and Skinner, Roque and Hernandez. I was the corpsman, the 'Doc' the medic. It was my job to patch guys up when they got hit and if I must say I was damned good at it too. Anyhow, one day we were on an assault mission, landing in a field and we were supposed to take an outpost south of Denang. It was simple. Then the Sarge all of a sudden has this conniption fit, straightens up with a cold sweat and a scared look on his face," Mr. Christy recollected. Mike listened patiently, then realizing what had happened to the man. He had a premonition.  
  
"Anyway, then Sarge tells the pilots to turn around, that there was going to be an ambush in the field. Now, Sarge was an honest man and I wasn't one to disbelieve him, but recon said the field was clear and we would have been good to go, but Sarge persisted. He said that he saw some guys at the edges with guns, but no one believed him. Still, he got Deveaux to hold up the chopper for a few seconds more as we watched the others land. Sure enough, there was an ambush, all four choppers that landed had been shot to shit, all guys dead. Someone set off an RPG right where we would have landed, it would've hit the cockpit and blown back through us, it was hell," Mr. Christy continued, pausing to take a breath. Mike could tell that the story was hard for his teacher to tell, but Mr. Christy continued on and kept going.  
  
"One RPG clipped the cab, blew Deveaux to shit and Padilla couldn't control it for very long. We crash landed, all of us got hurt pretty bad, but we were alive. Padilla was the only casualty, as our tail rotor broke off and shot through the chopper, sliced his head clean off. Another chopper behind us got us out, so we didn't have to worry about capture, but we all spent some time at the hospital," Mr. Christy said.  
  
"Your sergeant had a premonition," Mike butted in, "he had a premonition and saved you from the ambush in the field."  
  
"Yes, he saved the eight of us, but Deveaux and Padilla didn't make it out. We just chalked it up to coincidence, bad luck, hell, guys die in war. Still, things got stranger. Sarge kept having dreams, seeing all of us die, one at a time, they just thought it was shell shock, that he was nuts. Then the rest of us started dying. Masters succumbed to an infection where they amputated his leg. Hernandez went into a seizure and kicked out his IV line, they calmed him down and injected him with a sedative, though they didn't notice there was some air in the syringe. The bubble went to his heart, giving him an air embolism. A day later, Roque was preparing to go back to combat when he got hit by a jeep and dragged for a hundred yards. At first we thought it was bad luck, but it did look kind of odd. Sarge knew each of the deaths before they happened, but we didn't believe him. It wasn't until Skinner fell down those stairs that I believed. Sarge and I, we went AWOL, we knew something was going to happen to me next. Ya see, they all died in the order Sarge said they would. He knew I was next and he figured if he could keep me out of harms way, the both of us would survive this thing. Wasn't more than twenty minutes before he had another vision, I was going to be killed by a stray mortar. Sure enough, we heard one coming, and it was going right for us. My foot was stuck in a sewer grate, and I would have been killed had Sarge not broken my foot and thrown me to the side, catching the mortar himself and being blown apart by it. He intervened, sacrificed his life for mine, and I lived," Mr. Christy finished, sitting heavily into the chair.  
  
"So you know about all this, you've lived this before, and now it's happening again? Isn't it?" Mike asked.  
  
"This is my third time, and I am positive that it is. Right now, you guys have got to figure out a way to get around this and hide away," Mr. Christy said.  
  
"Wait," Mike said, "this is your third time? What was the second."  
  
"The second one was more dodging a bullet than anything else. You know the story of Flight 180?"  
  
"Yeah," Mike said, "Sarah gave me a book about it and other events."  
  
'Well, I used to work at Mount Abraham High School, I taught biology there, Larry Murnau and Val Lewton were good friends of mine, Clear Rivers, Terry Chaney and Billy Hitchcock were some of my better students. Anyway, when it came down to the time of the field trip, Valerie and I both wanted to go, so it went down to the flip of a coin to see who would go. She won, they died, I lived."  
  
"Jesus Christ," Mike said as he realized the severity of the situation.  
  
"Yes, I moved out after all the survivors had been killed, when Alex and Clear went into hiding," Mr. Christy added.  
  
"So, do you know how to beat this thing? You've done it before, can you help us beat the design and get back to normal?" Mike asked.  
  
"No," Mr. Christy said, "I don't know how. But I might know some people who do."  
  
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a scrap of paper and a pen, things he never left home without. Mike watched as he scrawled some words on the small piece of paper, then handing it over.  
  
"These people operate a safe house that can keep you alive. They're all survivors in their own right, all of them had visions or premonitions, they've all beaten the order. You gather up everyone, you get to them ASAP and you might all live to tell your story for another book."  
  
With that, Valentine Christy stood up and walked to the door. Trying to get up, Mike sat back as his head hurt madly.  
  
"What about you Mr. Christy?"  
  
Mr. Christy turned around to face Mike, though he couldn't meet eyes with one of his favorite students.  
  
"I'm tired of running. I ran before, I'm just going to sit back and let whatever happens happen. I lost my wife to cancer four years back, I lost my job, my kids are all grown up and parents in their own right. Thanks much for the offer Mike, I know if there's anyone out there who can save me it's you, but I've run enough. It's up to you now to keep them alive."  
  
As he turned to the door, Mike spoke up, "Hey Mr. Christy?"  
  
"Yes?" Mr. Christy said, turning around.  
  
"Please be safe."  
  
"I'll do my best."  
  
Like that, he left the room. Mike sat back in his bed in disbelief, not quite understanding what had been said. Mr. Christy had told his entire story, and said their might be salvation yet. Just go to these people, he had said. Looking to the paper, Mike saw an address in Nevada. With big letters at the top, Mr. Christy had written:  
  
THE WATCHERS 


	12. Chapter 12: Reliving the Past

(Chapter 12: Reliving the Past)  
  
Reaching the driveway to his house, Valentine Christy reached above his head and activated the garage door opener. The big massive door retreated into the ceiling, and taking the opportunity, Mr. Christy pulled his aging Chevy into the garage, wedged firmly between his boat on the left and the workbenches on his right. He got out of the vehicle, stretching his back and exhaling deeply. So, you're going to die. Do they write pamphlets to comfort people who are being stalked by the angel of death? Probably not, no one would know what to write about. Too many ways to die, the only way out living a life of fear. Fun…  
  
Walking from his car, he looked back at the garage, its open door showing the bounty within. He had fish mounted on one wall, a classic propane barbeque, an impressive collection of tools, power and otherwise, and one hell of a fishing boat. Then came the more logical side of his mind, seeing threats in every item. Fish hooks were rusty, tetanus, a bit too painful. Tools could fall, cut, slice, kill. Cans of gas near the boat, also a threat. With the garage door opener in hand, he shut it. With the door halfway down and quickly descending, he walked away. Lots of good memories in there Val, memories that should probably best be forgotten.  
  
Tossing the control into the air, he quickly palmed it and pocketed it.  
  
-----------  
  
As the door closed, the over-packed contents of the room rattled and shifted as they always tended to do. Valentine Christy had never been the best about setting things up safely in his garage, that had always been his wife's job. Since her death, it became filled more and more with hunting and fishing gear, the one thing besides teaching he called a passion. One trash can particularly close to the door shifted its position on the floor, going too close to the garage door and its moving support springs. As one spring moved up, helping the garage door close, it caught on the handle of the plastic trashcan, tipping it over onto its side. Contents spilled out, hedgeclippers hitting the floor and getting caught in one of the springs. Rakes spilled every which way. One shovel, a particularly aged one, caked thick with rust and dirt, fell hard, clattering across the floor and traveling along the edge of the wall. With the force of the fall, it kept moving, stopping only with its impact with the barbeque that Mr. Christy rolled out on weekends. The shovels impact produced no major damage, one or two inches off and it would have punctured the tank, destroying the garage. Instead, it harmlessly collided with the feed hose to the propane tank, cutting a large hole in the piece of plastic. When the shovel came to a rest, it collided with the handle on the tank, rotating it very slightly. The small rotation was enough to start releasing the heavy gas into the room, and with the garage as poorly ventilated as it was, the gas began to fill the lower portion of the room.  
  
-----------  
  
He had visited Mike at around noon, gotten home at one, and looking at his watch (and the dark sky for that matter) Mr. Christy knew it to be seven. Standing up from his big easy chair in the rec room, he smashed his head into the deer head that he had located above it.  
  
"Damn it!" he yelled.  
  
Rubbing his forehead, he stepped out of the way and looked up at the stuffed and mounted animals head. It was truly marvelous, the biggest horns Val had known since he had started hunting, and the satisfaction that he had knowing that he had killed the creature. Pity, it was a thing of beauty, but so goes the hunt.  
  
He looked over to the end-table beside the easy chair. His bottle of whiskey was almost empty. There was a double-barreled shotgun on the floor. Getting his bearings finally, Mr. Christy put the picture together. Bottle of whiskey, that would explain the headache. Oh yeah, the shotgun wouldn't work so you took to the bottle of whiskey.  
  
"The one time you want to kill yourself is the one time death won't let you die. How's that for irony," Mr. Christy mused to himself, laughing drunkenly and rubbing his head. It hurt like hell.  
  
He grabbed the bottle of whiskey again, taking another swig from the bottle and getting pleasantly buzzed. He looked at the picture on his wall, situated next to the window that looked out onto the garage. His old unit was there, the eight of them sitting in the chopper with broad smiles, all showing off their tattoos. Pulling up his right shirt sleeve, Mr. Christy looked at the tattoo, faded and stretched with time and age.  
  
"You're an old man Valentine," he said to himself, trying desperately to stand up and look at the picture at the same time, "you shouldn't be mixed up in all this shit. And you guys, you all died when I lived, why? What'd I do to deserve this? I lost everyone who ever meant anything to me, and why am I forced to stay and remember?"  
  
The picture didn't answer, just eight smiling faces in a helicopter, showing off faded tattoos of an eagle.  
  
"Yeah, I thought so," he said into the picture, "you guys never say anything because you're all dead. Is a quick death so hard to ask for? You don't let me kill me, so why can't you just kill me and get it over with?"  
  
Standing there, Mr. Christy realized how stupid he looked, yelling at a picture. Still, he was drunk, frightened and seriously enraged. With the bottle in hand, he threw it against the wall, glass and whiskey exploding in every direction. He kicked over the end table near his easy chair, turned over another coffee table, sending sporting, hunting and nudie magazines all over the floor. Standing near the window and breathing hard, he felt something hard and square in his pocket. The garage door opener. The key that represented what he could never open if he wished to remain alive. In a fit of rage, he threw it through the window, smashing the glass and landing hard on the ground outside.  
  
As he stood in the room, Valentine looked at the mess he had created. He laughed, sobering up slightly. Gawd, you old fool, you did it this time. You booze you lose. Just sit back, breathe, and relax. So long as you don't take any chances, don't make any bad moves, you can live forever. As he looked around the room, laughing slightly, he looked to a lamp that burned brightly in the corner of the room. A darkness passed over it, seemingly a shadow in a bright room. It almost carried the shape of a human head, a skull to be more precise. As he realized what he saw, his smile turned to a grimace as he knew the time had come.  
  
-----------  
  
Since Mr. Christy had fallen asleep, the tank of propane had emptied entirely into the garage, filling the room with a heavy and dangerous gas. It wafted around his car, his boat, the hedgeclippers wedged in the spring of the garage door, his boxes of stored Playboy magazines dating back to the war, and the gasoline cans he kept for his boat, all of which happened to be full. Always be prepared, one of Mr. Christy's personal mottos.  
  
As the garage door opener settled on the grass outside, it turned over on one clump and fell lightly on the 'OPEN' button. The minor depression was enough to get the button in and set the garage door in motion. The garage door, an unsophisticated piece of machinery, obliged to the command of the remote and immediately began its slow ascent to the ceiling. The hedgeclippers strained to protest on the spring, and with a harsh screech of metal on metal, set out a long stream of sparks. Almost instantly, the propane was ignited, the jet of flame traveling throughout the garage and hitting the boat's gasoline cans.  
  
-----------  
  
Mr. Christy could only stand by in shock as the garage exploded with a loud thump. The shockwave and fireball flew towards the house, blasting out the windows and setting the exterior walls aflame. Standing in his rec room, he barely had time to react. He saw fire, he could hear the blast, and he was instantly flung through the air. He should have hit the wall hard, bounced off and hit the floor with only a headache. However, the angle of the blast threw Valentine Christy through the air and right into the mounted deer head he had placed on the wall, its horns impaling him through the neck, chest, stomach and groin. After a few moments of intense bleeding and twitching, Mr. Christy's body gave up living and simply died. 


	13. Chapter 13: Running

(Chapter 13: Running)  
  
From the Journal of Sarah Rodriguez:  
  
So, here we are, running. Running where? I have no idea whatsoever, I mean I know where we are going but what is going to be there, that is another issue entirely. Mister Christy is dead. The ambulances came roaring in last night, though all they were really doing was bringing in another body. Another one off the list. Tina, Rhonda, Mr. Christy, these are people I know, people I care about. They're dying. I can see things though, so can Mike. Mike… What is it with me and Mike? We share something, a bond deeper than any I ever had with Tina, than any he had with Tyler, deeper than I think either of us have with anyone else. It's more than friendship, that much I am sure. I did have a crush on him at one time, but that was when we were kids, but is there still something? I'd like to think so. He's the only person so far who really understands.  
  
So far, Mike has the order figured out this much, according to the picture and what we can figure out from the dreams:  
  
Rhonda - X  
Darwin - X  
Mike - I intervened, skipped to Tina  
Tina - X  
Mr. Christy - X  
Rudy  
Clinton  
Nick  
Lori  
Katie  
Me  
  
I'm not looking forward to my turn on the list, but if the people Mr. Christy sent us to is any help, this could work out all right. Maybe they have some magic spell, or some loophole in the design, something, anything that they could help us with. Right now we're travelling together. Nicks van can fit us all, a little tight at time, but it helps. We try not to leave it whenever we can, only get out to get gas, food or to sleep in sleeping bags. It's our first day on the road, we're halfway there. Mike said drive through the night, but we all needed the rest. One week from today it is Christmas. Fancy that. Two days ago all eleven of us were alive. Somehow I don't think any one of us is going to survive this thing.  
  
Convincing everyone to come was a bit difficult. Katie and Rudy listened enough, and though they didn't believe a word we said, they agreed to come along to figure it out. Rudy is a real sport here, he's eager to please and is willing to help us figure this thing out. Lori, she's another problem entirely. I heard of a song once called "The Bitch is Back." You know that song? In her case, the bitch never left. She came kicking and screaming, almost literally. Clinton couldn't even convince her. I think what we've done is technically kidnap her, but if we don't stick together here, we're all going to die. It's our only hope. Mike and I, we're doing our best to keep everyone alive, though I don't know if we can do it.  
  
We've been on the road for one day now, and more and more I see the sweet guy I always knew. He's got troubles, but now we all do. I don't know, but I might be falling for him. How could something so wonderful come from something so horrible?  
  
Things To Remember: Mike is a friend, nothing more, yet… The Watchers. Who are they? They're in Nevada, nothing more to know. Mike said Mr. Christy told him that they knew about this, that they'd know what to do. I hope he's right. 


	14. Chapter 14: A Rest Stop

(Chapter 14: A Rest Stop)  
  
Rudy Williamson woke up on the nineteenth of December tired and sore, contorted inside of a double-wide sleeping bag on the ground of some motor court halfway between Vegas and Los Angeles. It was the scenic route, bypassing the desert and going through some mountain ranges, so the scenery was more green than brown, the air more cloudy and gray than musty. Barely clothed, he tried to exit the sleeping bag without disturbing Katie.  
  
Slipping out, he grimaced as his bare feet caught themselves on the gravel, pain searing through his legs. Stepping from the sleeping bags, the large youth felt the cold air hit him like a freight train, and he visibly grimaced.  
  
"A little cold there John Henry?" a voice asked sarcastically.  
  
Looking up to where the sound came from, he saw Clinton sitting on top of the van with a portable radio, a hot thermos of coffee and a cigarette. He was dressed warmly in a leather jacket and jeans, rightly so too, as it was freezing out. As Rudy stumbled about, he fumbled for his pants, shoes and sweatshirt, trying to put them on as he talked low to Clinton.  
  
"A little bit, I never got out of California before, this is a little new to me," Rudy said as he noted that his breath came out steam.  
  
"Well, like coach says," Clinton said as he took a drag off the cigarette, "it builds character."  
  
Finally dressed, Rudy walked gingerly around the separate sleeping bags that held Lori, Mike, Nick and Sarah, climbing up on the hood of the van and eventually on the roof. Clinton for the first time as long as Rudy had known him, was being considerate, as the volume of the radio was turned down to barely audible levels, letting those still sleeping sleep. With his friend on the roof of the van with him, Clinton offered Rudy some coffee. The big man politely declined.  
  
"Clinton, coach says everything builds character. Breaking a leg builds character. Diarrhea builds character. Dying builds character."  
  
Clinton shot Rudy an evil gaze, a look that frightened even the gentle giant.  
  
"Sorry, sorry, poor choice of words," Rudy conceded.  
  
"Yeah, poor timing too," Clinton said.  
  
As the two men sat on the vehicle, they looked back and forth silently, not sure of what to say or who should say it.  
  
"So, you do believe in this curse?" Rudy asked skeptically.  
  
"I'm not sure," Clinton responded, "I'd like it if I didn't. Mike, Mike's a creep, and every time he speaks I'd like to beat the crap out of him. However, everything he said turned out like it should, the boat, Mr. Christy, people dying like they should have on the boat. I think he might be doing these things, killing these people if you want my honest opinion. He coulda tipped the machine over on Darwin, he coulda scared Rhonda, he coulda started the fire at Mr. Christy's place."  
  
"What about Tina," Rudy said, "you were there."  
  
"Just luck," Clinton responded, "Mike might have taken the chance for what he had and pushed Tina into that falling glass."  
  
Rudy let out a low laugh and responded, "You're sounding more paranoid now than Nick."  
  
"Yeah," Clinton said as he threw his cigarette butt into the wind, "I know. What's your thoughts?"  
  
"Like you, I don't know. The evidence points towards either a string of bizarre coincidences, or a legitimate phenomena going on here. As Mike and Sarah said, if this design is real than I am next in line. I will admit it, I am not afraid of dying either. I am not going to go through with the usual arrogance of the American teenager, much like yourself, and say that I am bulletproof and that I am going to live forever. If it is my time, it is my time, though as I've been told my time, and yours, and the rest of ours for that matter, was really a month ago on that boat. Death happens, it is just another part of life, in fact I believe they walk hand in hand," Rudy responded, feeling that he was talking a bit too philosophical for even himself.  
  
"What about your life," Clinton asked, "aren't you afraid of what you're going to leave behind?"  
  
"I got nothing really to leave behind," Rudy said bluntly, "I live with my grandmother, a kindly old woman who has seen enough death in her time to not have a problem with one more dead relative. Mom was killed in a car accident when I was three, dad killed himself after my stepmom died of cancer, so no parents, and my half-brother Eugene was killed in some hospital fire in New York a year or so ago, so you see I don't really have much to miss."  
  
"What about your woman? Your team, your life?" Clinton asked.  
  
"Katie, she's a strong girl, it'll be hard for her, but she'll make it by. She may not look like it, but she could take on the world if she wanted to. The team will get on fine without me, and I don't have too many friends to leave behind."  
  
"Sounds like you want to die," Clinton said.  
  
"Me, no, I don't WANT to die, but in case I am really the next, I'll just say that my bags are packed. I've had a good run, I've had fun, and I have the love and friendship of a girl who likes me because of who I am instead of the fact that I'm on the team," Rudy said. Finally, he took the thermos of coffee from Clintons hand and took a sip.  
  
"This is good coffee," Rudy said.  
  
Clinton laughed resignedly at his friends remarks, wondering if the man had a death wish, yet proud of his friends steadfastness nevertheless, "Yeah, it's the best that rest stop down the road had to offer."  
  
"They have food too?"  
  
"Trucker's choice," Clinton responded.  
  
"Let's get some breakfast when everyone's up," Rudy said.  
  
Taking a sip of coffee, Clinton said, "That sounds like a plan."  
  
Like that, the two men sat silently, watching the sun rise over the horizon. Trying to break the solitude, Clinton turned up the radio a bit more and surfed the stations. After a half dozen radio evangelists and four commercial breaks, they hit music. Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" was playing energetically. Hearing this, they both shared a hearty laugh. 


	15. Chapter 15: Welcome to Amberlaine Mall

(Chapter 15: Welcome to Amberlaine Mall)  
  
Lori was pissed. Not like it was any change from her usual demeanor, but she didn't care for the feeling much either way. She had been sitting in the van for more than a day, with the exception of the two stops they made to eat and the one stop for the night. Mike and Sarah, the psychos, wanted to keep going on. Girls need their sleep, Lori mused, not necessarily their beauty sleep but their anti-bitchy sleep. Then of course, there was the issue of food. None of the places had salad or bottled water, a crime in of itself, but the sheer amount of grease that came off of the truck stop food would be enough to cause a person to break out just by looking at it the wrong way.  
  
Two days earlier, Clinton had coaxed her into a date after he got out of the hospital from some accident on his motorcycle. She was miffed by the accident, as the motorcycle was quite a bit of Clinton's appeal, but it wasn't that big an issue. He said they would be going out, instead he forced her into the van and they took off with the rest of the freak show to go to some random town in Nevada. She didn't even have time to get a change of clothes, and to top it off she broke the heel off of her shoe at the last rest stop. So, in short, she was pissed.  
  
At least the last stop had promise. They stopped in some small town in Amberlaine, Nevada, but it was big enough to have its own mall, so at least the world was not entirely cruel. Their lunch was made of whatever could be scrounged in the food court, and although it still had more grease and calories than Lori would have cared for, it could have been worse. Much worse. Truck stop worse.  
  
Finishing off a corn dog, Mike looked around nervously. Everything was a threat, everything could be a danger, everything could take any one of them out of the picture. The kid spilling his drink on the floor, avoid the puddle, avoid the death. A poorly wired kiddy ride, its electrical cords snaking out of the back and into an outlet in the wall. Avoid, electrocution, very painful death. The Christmas decorations scared him the most. They were hung haphazardly, many almost threatening. He could see in one of the trees branches that looked as if they were talons reaching out to grab them all.  
  
Mall management had placed the decorations meticulously for the Christmas holiday that was soon to come. They had been positioned for maximum visual effect, accentuated by the sunlight from the skylights above. Wreaths were hanged above every store, while long streamers were suspended from the ceiling beams across the upper floor. Many decorations were set up without a care in the world for customer or employee safety, but with more than a decade of no incident, nothing was thought of it. One particularly ornate wreath near Escalator B was hung on a hook that kept it a few inches too close to an air conditioning vent. It went unnoticed as decorations tend to do, and since the blowing of the air conditioning simply rocked the large ornament back and forth, many deemed it pretty. The rocking on the hook had gradually pushed the chain from its intended position. It was visibly impossible to tell that it had moved, but a few weeks under the direct blast of the air conditioning vent had pushed it several millimeters from where it should have been. The largely artificial wreath was huge, almost the size of a football player, was on it's last legs. It simply sat on its chain, waiting for anything to touch it, anything that would send it plummeting. The air conditioning sat ticking, waiting for its correct time to turn on. Soon enough its pre-programmed setting would turn on, and if the laws of physics kept up, would send the wreath plummeting.  
  
---------  
  
Sensing an opportunity while the others talked, Lori braced herself. Wait for the right moment, wait for it… Nick told a joke, got everyone laughing. Now! Get up! NOW!!!  
  
Sprinting for everything she was worth, Lori made a run for the escalators, no more than fifty feet away. Seeing this, Mike yelled, "LORI!!!!!"  
  
With little time to react, Mike and Rudy followed suit, barreling after the girl as she made it to the escalator. Sprinting with all his might, Rudy made it to her first, years upon years of playing football finally paying off. Grabbing her by the wrist, he tried to pull her back.  
  
"Ease up girl, you're with us," Rudy said calmly.  
  
"No way man, I'm staying away from you guys," she replied.  
  
"Look, coming with us is the only chance you're going to have to live," Mike said as he tried to reason with her.  
  
"Step any closer and I scream rape," she said threateningly to the two men.  
  
"I'm sorry girl, but this is for your own good," Rudy said as she spun her around and grabbed her in a large bear hug. It was at that point that she started screaming and getting the attention of others, shouting out shrilly, "RAAAAAAAAPPPPEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!"  
  
It was just then as the pair stood at the top of the escalators that the air conditioning turned on. Mike watched it, almost in slow motion, as the massive wreath plummeted from its hook and swung over the up escalator towards Rudy and Lori.  
  
"Rudy, heads up!" he yelled.  
  
Acting on instinct, Rudy pushed Lori away and stepped back, the massive Christmas decoration passing harmlessly between them, although it nearly grazed Rudy's forehead by nearly an inch. As it continued swinging like a pendulum, the wreath slammed into some ceiling panels near the food court, firmly lodging itself in the ceiling. Mike and Rudy simply stood staring at each other, while Lori sat dumbstruck on the floor. The rest of the mall's occupants as well as the travelers friends just watched on in horror as the event took place.  
  
"You ok man?" Rudy asked Mike.  
  
"Yeah, I think so. You?" Mike replied.  
  
"A little shook up, but I think I'll be fi-" Rudy said, cut off as the wreath broke through the ceiling panels and swung back in his direction. It hit him square on, immediately breaking his left collar-bone and knocking him off balance. Like that, Rudy was sent tumbling down the up-escalator.  
  
At first, his sheer size gave him enough momentum to go barreling down the moving stairs, but the steps moving in an upward direction kept carrying him up further, letting him roll more than what would be natural.  
  
Immediately, Mike ran to the STOP ELEVATOR emergency button in an effort to stop Rudy's inevitable death. His timing poor as always, Mike reached the button as the wreath and its wire broke free from their bearings, the wire coming down with great velocity as it snapped the plastic cover to the button and rendered it immobile.  
  
The moving steps beat him mercilessly, their sharp corners tearing into his skin and through his clothing, snapping bones and ripping flesh from his body, one corner tearing free his eye and its socket. After a while, he couldn't even scream anymore, just rolling on the steps in unimaginable pain. With his one good eye, he saw the whole world turn to a skull for a split second before it all went dark.  
  
One fall landed Rudy head-first onto the corner of the step, with the sharp metal gouging deep into his skull and killing him instantly. At the top of the escalator, Mike watched his friend take the plunge, though the moving flight of stairs conveniently brought Rudy's now stationary body right to him.  
  
Mike was quickly joined by Katie who could only stare at the motionless body that was once her boyfriend, her first and only boyfriend thus far. She stayed oddly quiet, mildly whimpering as a tear rolled down her cheek.  
  
Silently, the group of now six teens walked towards the mall exit without being noticed by any, all attention focused on the carnage of Rudy's death.  
  
The awkward moment of silence that followed the horror was broken by the mall's PA system finally coming on, spewing out 70's music (quite an odd choice for the holiday season), the least offensive that could be found. It seemed sick coincidence that Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust" started playing. 


	16. Chapter 16: Victory?

(Chapter 16: Victory?)  
  
Victory, Nevada was an out of the way town on the outskirts of Las Vegas. In it, the six refugees from death found their brief sanctuary for one night. It felt best to stray away from the major areas where there may be a police presence, as news spread of Rudy's death and the search for witnesses. Though it was declared an accident by police, there was mention of possible foul play. Mike couldn't help but laugh at the thought, foul play, well, in a way it is, a way it isn't.  
  
They could have kept plodding along their paths, and the idea was discussed, but Rudy's death was a setback. Seeing such a strong and kind individual taken and reduced to a heap of tissue by mans own devices was more than even the hardest could stand for one day. So, as such they checked into the Victory Motel, not the cleanest of habitations that could be found and most certainly not the most law-abiding. Prostitutes (although legal in Nevada, their presence was still quite unnerving) walked around the halls and near the road, trying to appeal to the passing trucker perhaps, though with the lack of official traffic, they did little more than stand around. The six had split what little cash they had left to rent three rooms for the night, with Mike and Sarah, Clinton and Lori, and Nick and Katie sharing each of the rooms.  
  
In room 40, Clinton lay in bed completely undressed, smoking a cigarette and listening as Lori showered. He was nervous, on edge more than ever. He knew he was next, the plan as it had been proven thus far made it all but a fact. Still, knowing he was next he could stand to an extent, it was the things that he had seen that scared him. Omens, premonitions, whatever they could be called, they frightened him. As he walked to the room earlier, one of the prostitutes outside, a frightening woman (if it really was a woman) who reeked of cheap liquor and bad cigarettes asked, "You next sonny?" before laughing an evil cackle.  
  
Then there was the matter of what he had found in the trashcan of the room. Whoever had had the room before the group arrived was into strange practices, if the smell of incense and the presence of a star drawn on the floor in chalk wasn't indication enough. More than anything else it was a sign that housekeeping needed to come by more often, but in looking in the trashcan Clinton was spooked. Inside was what appeared to be a human skull (actually a candleholder made of ceramics) yet the sight of it in the trash receptacle still spooked him. Every time he looked down, it stared up at him with blank eyes and grinned a toothy smile. That smile he could not stand.  
  
Then there was Lori. She had made herself a pain since the beginning of the excursion, and although Clinton really meant to save her life, she just ignored his efforts and seemed to withdraw into herself. She kept that way with good reason, as Clinton had to admit that they more or less did kidnap her and she did witness Rudy die a horribly painful death. Tapping ashes into an ashtray, he listened as the shower continued for what seemed like its sixth hour. The sex they had was almost mechanical, feeling as if neither was actually there. He began to internally question the relationship, then realizing it was because of the fact that he was the big, rich football player and the fact that she was a loose girl who liked other people to buy stuff for her. Normally those were qualities Clinton admired in women, but realizing that she was not good for situations where shit hit the fan, he saw what she really was. And he knew that this was a situation where the shit was hitting the fan. She claimed not to believe in the curse adamently, even though proof was building up that the pattern of death was indeed real.  
  
For the first time in an hour, the water stopped. Clinton waited a moment, listened for sounds. Minutes later, Lori exited the bathroom, wrapped in a towel with tears screaming down her face. Getting up, he stubbed out his cigarette and went over to his girlfriend.  
  
"I … don't … want to die!" she managed out between sobs.  
  
Lifting her chin up, Clinton looked into her eyes. He kissed her tenderly, pulled off her towel and made her not worry about dying any time soon.  
  
Two doors down in room 42, Sarah and Mike sit on adjacent beds, both utterly bored out of their mind. The TV only had three working channels, one showing some 24 hour televangelist, another showing a documentary on paper and the third showing the original Halloween (albeit heavily censored). Though Halloween had its appeal, with death already following them, the idea of seeing it stalk another group of made up characters seemed to have lost all its luster. Instead, they sat on their beds, tossing playing cards across the room into a trash can and keeping score. Sarah was winning by a long margin, letting Mike just to wonder what he had done wrong.  
  
"I win, again," Sarah said doing a mock victory dance as she got off of the bed and started picking up the cards.  
  
Mike couldn't help but laugh at her enthusiasm, especially with the times as they were, though looking at her was tough. As she jumped up and down he was painfully aware that she was wearing a tank top and also quite aware that it seemed too small for her frame. Finishing her dance, Sarah locked eyes again with Mike, causing him to once again avert his eyes.  
  
"Sorry," he said.  
  
"Don't worry about it," she responded, "you're a guy, I'm a girl, it's only natural."  
  
"Yeah," he said, finally getting up the courage that had failed him in years past, "but you've always been more than that. You were my friend for the longest time and the first girl I ever fell head over heels in love for. The problem was I never fell out of it, I'm still in love with you and will be until the day I die. We've hardly said anything to each other these last six years, with you being popular and drop dead gorgeous and all that stuff, while I've been the creepy guy who sits in the corner of the library reading science fiction novels."  
  
"Hey, wait a second," she said with some conviction, "much as I enjoy the compliments I'm not going to stand for any of this self-deprecation crap. For years you've been the nicest and sweetest guy around if not a little creepy to most of the others, but the only reason everyone thought that is because you never stood up for yourself and jumped at the chance. You were always quiet, you let them walk over you. You've always been the shy guy and that's why things have gone to the others. If you want anything to happen, you have to make it happen."  
  
"Like on the boat, we made that happen," Mike responded.  
  
"We both did that," Sarah said, slightly irritated, "you are the savior of this group, but that was something the both of us did. If you're going to live through this thing you've got to take an initiative."  
  
With years of pent up hopes behind him (and with the fact that death was looming around any dark corner, he felt he didn't have anything to lose) Mike Hooper got off of his bed and walked over to Sarah, kissing her firmly on the lips. The action took Sarah off guard, and as the two parted, the silence was deafening.  
  
"Wow," Sarah said, "definitely did not see that one coming."  
  
"Does that count as initiative?" Mike asked with a joking sort of smile.  
  
"I guess so," Sarah said, still not knowing what she should do.  
  
"I'm sorry, that's been building up for a long time," Mike said, quickly adding, "and it's my first, so I'm sorry if it doesn't match anything you've had befo-"  
  
He was cut off as Sarah kissed him back.  
  
"Stop worrying so much," she said, "you're a good kisser. And besides, there's a first time for everything."  
  
Mike stepped backwards, sitting back down on his bed, slightly surprised.  
  
"What?" Sarah asked, "Is something wrong?"  
  
"Sorry, doing that was something I've hoped to do for the longest time yet never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd have the chance to do," Mike said.  
  
'What, kiss me?" Sarah asked, flattered.  
  
"Yeah," he said, "you go eighteen years with a look but don't touch policy around girls and you start to wonder when if ever anything is going to happen."  
  
"So I take it you're a-"  
  
"Oh yeah," Mike responded quickly, then falling back into the awkward silence.  
  
Sarah looked deep into Mike's eyes, seeing more in them than she had ever seen before. So much pain, so much hurt, they'd both seen a lot in the last few days. Smiling, she kissed Mike on the lips once more, and as she parted, whispered into Mike's ear, "You've said it yourself, there's a first time for everything…"  
  
As they parted, Sarah pushed Mike onto his back on the bed, crawling up beside him as she fully intended to share a bed and her being with Mike that night.  
  
In room 41, Nick lay on his bed staring at the ceiling and the large (and somehow highly disturbing) array of stains that dotted the ceiling. Katie lay on the bed, rolled up in a ball and completely catatonic, occasionally getting up to take her asthma inhaler in her mouth, but other than that not responding to outside stimuli of any sorts. Listening to the sounds coming from the two rooms that sandwiched theirs, Nick couldn't help but laugh.  
  
"I have the distinct feeling that there is sex going on between our compatriots," Nick said with certain bravura, looking over to Katie (ever the unappreciative audience), "wanna make it a hat trick?"  
  
After she made no reaction whatsoever, Nick didn't lose a beat with his comic timing, "Didn't think so."  
  
Rolling over, he walked over to the TV (notably missing a remote) and turned it on. Surfing the channels, mostly local access, some home shopping and one with a weird special on paper manufacturing, Nick finally settled on a good old horror classic. Stephen King's "Cujo", certainly fitting for the road as Nick was a definite King fan, and although it wasn't the masters best work, it'd do for the road. Sitting down on the floor (after hearing urban legends of dead bodies found in hotel mattresses, he tried to avoid them as much as possible) Nick relaxed for a time, watching the movie as a killer Saint Bernard terrorized the family locked in their car. It wasn't Shakespeare, but it'd have to do for the night… 


End file.
